I experienced a weird problem with my desktop yesterday. I have a new computer with 4Gb of Ram, 500 Gb hard disk, Windows Vista etc.

Whenever I logged on to the Internet the damn thing would freeze after about 30 seconds. I plugged the modem into my laptop (which is also newish) and it worked fine. I then assumed that I had a virus or something on the desktop so I ran a scan - nothing except a tracking cookie.

I thought that my Internet software (AOL) might be corrupted - so I uninstalled it and reloaded it. The problem persisted so I gave up and went to bed.

I logged on this morning and everything worked fine. I had a suspicion that it might have something to do with an animated advert on the AOL home page yesterday. I dicussed it with a friend (who is a bit more computer savvy than me) and he thought that I was right and that the problem was due to not having Adobe Flashplayer on the desktop (which, as a result, couldn't cope with the animated advert)!

Now I think on it, I am regularly nagged about not having Flashplayer installed. This situation is f***ing ridiculous - for a variety of reasons!!