Just to update all those that offered advice. Installed FreeRam XP Pro and noticed that it was only working with 64 meg ram, took it back to my tech and apparently one stick of ram was cactus , replaced and all is back to normal. I am surprised that anything managed to run on only 64meg but it did, painfully slowly and so did Avast (just) I was determined to track it down because I didn’t want to unistall it. It’s an excellent Virus prog. that we’ll be sticking with. Many of my friends have converted to it as well as the shop techie is now recommending it to all his customers. Thanks to you all
Winnie