Looks like it's ok now. Thanks for the advice everyone. edit: When I posted this, the computer froze with svchost.exe again causing problems. This time I just rebooted to fix it for now. edit again: found i could not connect to work, this was because IE6 only had 56-bit encryption. Tried Firefox, it let me log in but then wanted to download a 123meg Java plugin. Er, no way! Then, found I had a service pack for this OS, put it in and i had 128-bit encryption in IE6, and could now connect to work with no problem. And without needing Java.