Following on from my New Year's Day computer tosh, I had another two hour stint yesterday. The day before, I found that despite being protected against viruses, I had acquired two of the barstewards. I got rid of them but then in the middle of my latest two hour session, I found that I had another bleeding virus. Time to act: I upgraded my anti virus software from freeby to a paid for service. I did that, ran it and it gave me the all clear. When I logged on this morning I let it run again and it didn't report any problems. Moreover, I opened up Outlook and switched on to Braodband and IE and all worked well enough: first time for ages and I hope I haven't spoken too soon! Also during the two hour session I deleted all of the software that either I don't use much and/or that I don't really know where it came from. They all went, although I do have the *.exe files to reinstall them if I want to. I still have the shutdown problem with Windows, however, that seems to be well known and that has my computer saving my settings, closing down and then just hanging with a blue screen and a movable mouse cursor ... nothing else can work and a manual switch off seems to solve the problem. Still, I have to hang around to flick the switch. I'm told it's due to a driver conflict somewhere on my system and I did install some software that Microsoft recommended but it only solved the problem once. Ah, Gates! DW