Thanks for the advice, havent had time to look at it until recently
1)hernell On checking I find that the audio scrubber has been off all the time so that is not the reason
2)Marc, I havent gone quite as far as using MSConfig (I always find it so difficult to reset actions if done wrongly in MSconfig) BUT I did find 4 programs of the type "checking internet for updates" All ok and known programs but when I killed these 4 I had a radical improvement. From a crash every hour to maybe a crash a week which I can live with
So it does indeed seem to be an interaction problem between programs