Sorry for the delayed response and many thanks for all your posts. Delayed because buoyed by your successes I thought that perhaps my problems were a one-off....and I clicked on the upgrade again....disaster! P;3, I think it was accurately an upgrade, not the usual updates that are within the SAS box, a small box bottom right of my screen, informing me that there was an upgrade- that was the culprit! As soon as I clicked everything froze, wouldn't turn off/nothing responded and I had to hold the on/off button in to shut down. Yesterday, on rebooting it went through a complete disc check, about 30 minutes, still no joy but I managed to System Restore. Same again today, only no disc check, wouldn't start in Safe Mode but I managed to get Sys Res again and it seems kosher now. (Incidentally, I've never kissed a man, but if I ever meet the guy who thought up Sys Res, I may not be able to make that statement!) SAS is now "Ex" on my machine and, as none of you seem to have had any problems, I can only assume that somehow it clashed with something in my ancient computer. Computers eh?? Thanks everyone, for your help.