...I bought  a 1TB drive and a ATI5770 Graphics Card (I did momentarily consider a 6950, but thought it might be a bad case of overkill for an AM2 system), and a new PSU (old one has no PCIe output)

So I installed the devices, powered up and found...

it had caught a virus whilst I was away (one of those Antivirus pop up types).
Removed that, but ...
Seemed that a number of the services had been buggered. cant copy and paste files amongst other things..

Looked like it was time to get the XP disks out and reinstall -

Damn they're scratched and it won't install

Windows 7 Family pack time next week

At least World of Warcraft runs at between 25 and 65 fps now