The PC crashed this morning with a 'Windows Protection Error' and would only boot in Safe Mode. A step though the drivers pointed the guilty finger at memalloc.vxd. My mate Rob sensibly mentioned that it might be hardware problem more than likely a SIMM. I also had visions of upgrading the OS from ME to XP, I may come back to that another time. Rather than splash out on some new hardware to see if that cured the problem I created a Windows ME Startup Disk, yes I know I should have created one before but at least I have one now, and used it to revert to a copy of the registry from a few days ago. The gods of technology must have been smiling on me 'cos this fixed the issue. Not sure there's a moral to this tale but it would seem this backup/repair/startup disk stuff actually works.