Thanks everyone - I'm back with my computer The Windows update issue seems to have been sorted and the recent update had been done. The technician said that the sorting out process had picked up three errors which have been sorted out. I think it may be down to the Windows patch for the Meltdown/Spectre Intel issue. Microsoft arranged it so that unless your a/v s/w had set a particular flag in the registry the update process would be frozen. Although the flag had been set, the process had been frozen.
Only time will tell if the Microsoft patch for the Meltdown/Spectre issue will have any noticeable effect on computer performance. It won't for most things, just processor intensive activities.
Thanks Squiggle, I hope my brother got back home without any problems - none were expected.
Better catch up with client work, not that there's much to catch up on. I had been doing some preparatory work this morning on a couple of clients where I didn't need a computer and catching up on some technical material.