RussellJesson

Just to follow up the problem, the cure was to re-install Vista. There was some form of corruption whether it was malware caused I've no idea as all the scans came back negative.
The only clue I have is some dodge MP3 files were loaded on and played which might have caused a malware loaded codec to be loaded, now disabled. The other issue was the laptop was reporting traces of Norton despite, to my knowledge, nothing from them being any where near the system.