Hi Triggerfinger,
I'm becoming cautiously optimistic about this thing! I left the machine on all day and the icons remained stable. I turned it off and on again and no beeps! I repeated this a couple of times tonight and again no beeps! So I'm beginning to think it's cured.
I'm going to run a few more tests tomorrow (typing up a document and so on - 'cos in the past I've managed a few lines and then random things started happening such as it inserting a date repeatedly) and if it doesn't cause any hassle I'll return it to my friend as fixed but with a codicil that it could happen again.
I've really no idea why it should just decide to cure itself, but there you go. I can only assume that there must have been something like dust in the keyboard connector - as you suggested - and that running the memory test fixed this (although it did do the beeping thing once after I shut down the memory test).
Hey ho! Life's full of mysteries. I'll post one more time tomorrow to let you know how I went on, but for now thanks for your help and suggestions - I think you put me on the right track at least. If all goes well with it tomorrow I think this thread can be closed off.
Regards, and thanks once again,
Dave
