Thanks, I shall certainly try both your suggestions. There is a fair amount of .Net and Visual Studio related content and service packs on this machine as MS programming has been my profession for more than a decade, a fact that makes my inability to resolve this issue all the more frustrating !

Getting there ! Combination of the hot fix and removing .Net 3 has greatly reduced the no. of sites not working first time, ironically the only remaining problem sites are Microsoft ones notably Windows Live. Anyway alot lot better so thanks very much for the advice