OK, thanks guys, I am going to do about 3 online scans, Kaspersky, Pandascan and housecall, then give it a defrag and leave it at that. The Kernal thing is well out of my expertise, though I might go for it if the laptop totally goes down and won't reboot. So far I have spent 2 day's on this piece of crap when I could have pleaded ignorance and gone about my business.

Learned lessons

1) Slow computer seems more often than not, too many start up processes.
2) Don't go near an unstable person's computer, they will blame you for everything.
3) I could.......but I choose not to.

Thanks for your help guys, I think this computers pretty knacked, but it gets on the net now, and I have locked it down severely, so I reckon it is probably pretty safe to do even the banking on.


Jonny the cleaner Frooty Frond