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Updated both my desktop & wife’s laptop to Win 10 AU a day or two after release, and neither of us has had any T’bird problem at all.

I’ve now given Teamviewer a trial, and here’s how it went:
Downloaded Teamviewer (for personal use) and installed it on the intended host PC (Win 8.1). It gave me an ID no. for the PC.
Downloaded Teamviewer Portable into the laptop (Win XP SP3) and unzipped it into its own directory (no ‘install’ required).
Executed TV portable on the laptop and requested connection to the ID of the host. It asked for a password that the host displayed.
It’s a different password each time, so that wouldn’t work for me; I need unattended connection.
The solution: you can set a ‘Personal password’ on the host which is then permanent. This can be set in Extras – Options – Security on the host.
Once that was done, I could connect using the same password each time.
I also unzipped TV portable to a usb stick and and SD card. It worked fine from them both.
Must say that the performance is very snappy!
Thanks again for everyone’s contribution to this topic.

Thanks for everyone’s input on this, including the security considerations.
I’ll try out Teamviewer in the next few days and see whether it meets my needs.

Thanks for the replies.
Can anybody give me the name of the non-install exe that I should use please?
I guess I could run it from a USB stick or an SD card. Is there a URL I could get it from?

It’s probably a 16-bit program, which Win8 won’t run. Wonder if running XP (or win98) in a VM might be a possibility; worth a try.

bbearren’s advice is right on the money! I’m running Win8 Pro and it networks perfectly with my old XP machine, my wife’s Win7 laptop, and also my Suse Linux machine. The trick is definitely avoid Homegroup, and use Workgroup instead. Had all sorts of trouble with Homegroup.
Good luck!

Oops! last address should have been: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28877

Hi Alstewart. I and many others have had the same problem – some updates offering themselves over and over for installation.
In the end I solved the problem by downloading the exe files individually from the MS update site and running those one at a time.
You can find the exe for each update at the MS site, eg. for KB 2518864, KB 2572073, KB2633880 :
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26323
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27713
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27713

Ballpoint.

Perhaps I’ve come in a bit late on this; apologies if that’s so, but the OP hasn’t indicated if a solution has been found.
It does sound like a power supply issue, but recently a friend had a similar problem. I found that the heatsink on the
CPU was totally clogged with lint, dust etc (the stuff that’s floating around in the air) and the CPU fan couldn’t push
air thru the heatsink. On cleaning the heatsink & fan the problem disappeared. It was obviously overheating.

Thanks for the replies.
I already use Acronis to clone my hard drive, and have to admit that it’s saved my hide a few times!
My wife tends to keep her laptop at the office, and is not inclined to image/clone or do anything she regards as ‘technical’;
son and daughter live away from home but still expect me to keep their laptops going – again what they do is out of my control.

I just felt it would be a good idea to have a local copy of all the fixes to date, so that they can be readily applied wherever needed.
I see that M$ has already ended mainstream support for XP-SP3, but continues ‘Extended Support’. Don’t really understand
what that might be.

I have been calling the decade “the twenty-tens”

Hey, Stuart…
the decade doesn’t actually start till next year.