I'm probably misremembering things - doesn't W7 tell you which programs it's closing when you shut down?

It's probably nothing sinister, anyway, and might just be programs set to autostart. If you've not used them during your session, you'd probably be unaware of them running in the background.

It'll be interesting to hear how your machine behaves as you experiment with preventing various things from starting.

I still believe it might be worth trying a Macrium image - good for peace of mind. It'll be a little annoying if you have to run a chkdsk on the external drive, too, but at least we've figured out how to do it.

A quick thought - confirm the external drive is NTFS-formatted? FAT 32 probably wouldn't work for images, as they comprise a file considerably larger than the 4GB maximum file size for NTFS.

I had a slightly damp stroll to the gym, where I was dismayed to meet up with someone I know. This always results in one feeling one has to try just that little bit harder, and I found that I needed a bit of a lie-down as well as a nice, long shower on my return. I now feel sore and tired virtuous.

At least I'm definitely entitled to a couple of beers - and should really organise some supper, too.

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with that machine.