Thanks for replies, a combination of long holidays for both of us has meant that I have been unable to test any of the above as yet. I'll revisit now with some spare ram, the ISO test disc and maybe...

I notice you have the Norton Internet Security suite installed perhaps this is blocking some functionality of the facebook etc coding. You could try disabling the relevant Norton elements briefly and...

Tried visiting the manufacturers website for fresh drivers?

A friends Gateway ME system is doing something odd. From cold it freezes after bios, then after a hard restart it gets a little further in the boot process, another hard restart and it freezes at the...