The pc upgrade is complete and I finally got round to doing a backup. And it worked!! One outcome of the upgrade was how slow XP took to shutdown (startup was fine). A quick Google found a great XP tips site – shutdown is only around 15 seconds now.
Only annoyance is how noisy my processor fan is. A Zalman Flower would solve it, although a motherboard upgrade and a new chip is far more tempting. As well as the flower.