Thanks Terry.
OK I panicked...hopefully unnecessarily. After switching off for a while and then back on I'm using that OS now. The event viewer has one sole entry:
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, has a bad block.
I was in the midst of a Google Search when everything except my cursor seized up and the noises started.
The screen went black for a minute or so and one white pop-up in the middle which I can't remember what it said unfortunately.
I'm doing chkdsk's as we speak. Actually the machine did one on its own as I booted up and it found 4kb in bad sectors. I'm about to do a five stage one.. chkdsk C: /r - hopefully that will correct whatever it was.
I'll also do a malware check.
I also have a Western Digital Diagnostics tool which I might use when I'm booted back into XP, that can check the entire hard drive in one operation and can correct errors on the fly without destroying data. It's also faster than the Windows utilities.
I was trying to find out via Google if Microsoft Works 9 contains Word 2007, Excel and Powerpoint Viewers 2007 as not sure I can afford to pay for Microsoft Office when my free trial ends.
Anyone know? MSFT website doesn't give a list of "the ingredients".
This experience has reminded me that it's about time I cleaned the dust out of the interior of my PC case.
Addendum:
Terry,
I ran the WD Diag. tool extended diagnostic on disk 1 from disk 0 and it found some bad sectors (even after Windows did the same) which it said it could repair but data might be lost. I took the chance and it now says the entire disk is "Smart" healthy.
No malfunctions thus far, so hopefully those bad sectors were where there was no data.
What a weird experience...!