Derek,
I hope this isn’t a red herring but; I turned my machine on on Monday and it took an age to start and when it did eventually run I couldn’t start SignLab, Firefox or Outlook express etc. I did a couple of restarts without any success then remembered that my free Zone Alarm had updated itself, when I looked into the settings some had changed to max instead of medium, can’t think what they were, anyway I set them all to medium, re booted and all seems to be ok.
Like I said I hope this isn’t a red herring. Off home now , hope you sort it.
Steve