Thanks for the reply

Im not to clued up on the internal stuff on pcs but i presume my laptop has 2 sets of memory?

This is the spec of the laptop:
Esprimo V5505, Core 2 Duo T7250 2Ghz, 2 x 1024MB DDR2 Ram, 250GB, DVD-RW, Vista Home Premium

Presume the bold is the memory, Would it be safe to assume that its L1 thats causing the problems?

Ok, going by your suggestions i should try and isolate the simm, now as im no expert is this straightforward enough to do? I dont know if this helps but i can see sda1 & sda2 but i just cant get into them.

The crash happened when it was downloading a optional windows update (wont be doing that again) so there is nothing that i have put there recently that i am too bothered about losing but i do have pics from ages ago that i would like back.

Thanks again for getting back to me.

Oh forgot to add will having the laptop on while im tryping this cause any more problems?