Hi again, Sprogget
Having carried out all the methods so far, including the Apropos fix, we seem to be getting somewhere!
I did have a failure to boot , which went through several cycles, getting to the XP welcome page before restart, but generally things seem to be working.
Using Mozilla instead of that awful IE8 seems to have sped things up too.
Thanks for all your help, I'll keep you informed how it goes after a good soak time.
Cheers
