As usual, I couldn't leave the fault alone, and it was near 3am before I finally gave up.
In the old days, I had boxes of MBs Drives etc., to substitute. Now, almost nowt. I'm pretty sure that the DVD is knackered, and while it is being accessed - and unable to see the disc - it totally bogs down the system. Unplugged, the computer flies.
Can't do anything until I can load the soft, so, a new CD/DVD unit. Is there a consensus on a good one of these? I used Teac in the old days. Never anything else for floppies. Never, ever, had one fail out of hundreds.
There was one other thing in the BIOS. It said: Things in [ ] were disabled in another section.(Sic) Every darn item is enclosed in this way. I went through every single item and read the comments for each one. Nothing!