since my recent post in this thread it has occurred to me that I should have mentioned that I was suspicious of the machine before today. For about a week or ten days it has been telling me, whenever Firefox launches, that FF is not my default browser, to which I always respond with "make it" and "check every time" which it clearly does not take on board. I am then blessed with the "FF has installed new helpers/addons/toolbars" and Zone Alarm behaving like I have a new version of FF. I always reject all of these things (I hate all of the extra guff that steals space in the browser by adding yahoo search tools etc) and stick with the dictionary option only.
Maybe I need to remove and re-install FF as it seams to have got its undies in a bunch.
Rans6....