After my previous post (puzzled) I reran avast and it found a virus (win32 Trojan Gen Other) - Congratulations because AVG and the cleaner (a trojan expert?) found nothing. It deleted what it could and I used the report to delete most of the others. Im running Me all patches included. Avast cannot delete - nor can I, the files in Restore/temp/A0026990.cpy etc. On rerunning avast it found there were now 21 files in restore temp infected. (itb is growing) How can / do I remove these without a full reformat? They are write protected and I cannot change the file attribute. Btw I believe I have tracked down the source of the original infection - time will tell. Thank you for a great product.
Spager again - Sorted it - switched of windows restore and rebooted (forcing it to “empty” the restore folder) - did full scan with avast - all clear - switched on windows restore - scanned with avasti - again all clear - seens to be cured (for now )
Thanks for the advice, help and a brilliant product
Spager,
I hope it will solve the problem (but, with respect to the symptoms you have described, still indicate there might be a hardware problem). Let’s see in a couple of days…
Vlk
Hi Vik - Avast cured the virus but you were right there was an intermittant hardware problem - It was a swine to find but it was the monitor - it was failing to initialise correctly dispite having latest drivers, still it was an old monitor that provided good service - a big hammer cured it 
- well that and a new monitor :
Thanks again for your help.