Yeah, got all that.
Finally reinstalled Windows and guess what?
Marko was right.
An obvious answer was part of the problem.
The freeze was caused by the soundcard. Not so much a cable connection as a PCI connection.
The card was correctly placed into the port but the card screw holes and the case holes were out of alignment.
So when I screwed it in, it caused the card to slightly come out of its port.
Couldn't tell visually but could feel slight movement.
Also, the Creative Soundblaster 'Live' cards do have some 'issues' with Asus mobo's.
After a lot of fiddling around in the Bios (in a similar area to Marko's advice. You know your computers mate!) the Soundcard was finally recognised by XP though only after getting through quite a few dodgy XP disks from Pantip, I might add.
Fornicating Microsoft, Asus and Seagate!
Start making your products compatible, please.
Ona positive note. The system is ultra fast now. Scan disk took about 30 seconds!! :smile: