That was the first thing I did. Prior to reinstalling, I tried using
system restore only to find no restore points and the date shown as
31 December 1899.

Calum,

That's actually a different error than the one fixed by 290700 and is due
to problems with Win Me's Help system.

For more details of both these errors see:
KB275646 "System Restore Shows Date of Saturday, December 30, 1899"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=275646)
and
KB290700 "Checkpoints that you create after September 8, 2001 do not
restore your computer" (http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=290700).

Let's hope that it is smooth sailing from now on!

Mike M


calum wrote:

AV - Nothing wrong with installing just the AV component of the CA
suite

I removed each of the four components in turn but even the AV
component
alone made things very slow.

How is the PC connecting to the net?

ISP supplied modem/wireless router. I'll investigate your various
firewall suggestions.

.. it is essential that at the very least you install the 290700
patch for system restore

That was the first thing I did. Prior to reinstalling, I tried using
system restore only to find no restore points and the date shown as
31 December 1899.