Quote from: saundthorp on April 21, 2011, 14:13:29

When you say a "hardware fault" do you mean the hard drive as that is now the only piece of hardware I have on the computer. Since it crashed last night I haven't bothered to try and load the drivers for my printers, because previously every time I tried to load the printer drivers the computer really went gaggar.
Could my computer man's copy of XP be faulty?

When I say 'a hardware fault' I mean any part of your computer's hardware, not just peripheral devices attached to the motherboard, but possibly a fault with the motherboard itself or even the power supply giving a faulty or spiky voltage.

It's almost impossible that it's to do with the copy of XP.  The only way it could be software related is if you have re-loaded a faulty piece of software or re-infected your 'puter with a virus. That could conceivably happened when you reconnected your usb drive, but you'd probably have had to run something off the usb drive for that to happen.

I'm with you, Martin. Since writing my last post I have been to see my computer man and he actually said he would have it back and check out the motherboard.
Thanks for the info.