Hi Triggerfinger,
Sorry I didn't get back to you - my life's hectic at the moment. I let the memory test run until it reached 20 passes and Windows said that it hadn't found a problem. I decided to remove the laptop keyboard as you suggested and turned the machine on one last time... to my wary surprise, no beeps. So I tried again, a couple of times on Sunday night and at various times throughout yesterday and today. Still no beeps and it seems to be okay. However (!), to be absolutely sure it's not a temperature problem or anything else I can think of, I've now turned it on and I'm going to leave it on for a couple of hours to see if the problem occurs where the icons flicker. I'm then going to run a test on it which involves using/opening several applications and see if it behaves - I'll let you know later tonight.
I have to admit that I wouldn't have thought about the keyboard connector - that's one I'll archive for future reference all right.
It is possible that my friend spilt something on the keyboard, but he's not admitting to it so I can't say for sure, but it if beeps again I'll try cleaning the keyboard connector out as suggested. I think at that stage I'll admit defeat over the thing, 'cos I'm beginning to have nightmares about it.
Regards and thanks,
Dave
