Has this one been missed ?  I just saw it sitting here all alone and lonely.  

Thank-you. How can i tell if a pop-up stopper is running ?

Thanks. The intermittent nature of the problem makes me think it is not the graphics driver causing the problem as i would expect it to occur all the time. I am not sure how to do a spyware scan, but i have Norton antivirus and there are no viruses detected. There is a box just above the task bar which says "Allowing Pop-Ups" I have also noticed when i right click on the programme that has been sent to the task bar, the screen will flicker a number of times and the music for the game can sometimes be heard in the background. Agsin, shutdown and re-start sometimes cures the problem, sometimes not. To be honest, it is driving me mad but i am at a loss to know what to do. I am grateful for any suggestions, and i am fairly new to using a PC.

If you have something which is saying "Allowing Pop Ups", that would indicate that you do have a pop up stopper installed, but if it's allowing them, that shouldn't cause the problems you are having.  Just as an experiment, can you right click the icon where it says "Allowing Pop Ups" and see if you can Exit, or Disable it, then try your games?  That will then eliminate the Pop Up Stopper as being the culprit, or prove that it's guilty.

It doesn't really sound like a Spyware issue, but if you want to see what's lurking on your machine, you could download and run a program called Ad Aware, which will find and allow you to remove any spyware on your PC.  Make sure, before you run the scan, you click "Check For Updates", and download the latest definitions.

I'm still hoping someone more technical will show up soon!  

Thank-you Sandra and Simon.
1. I have Direct X 9.0
2. I previously removed and re-installed the graphics card driver from the CD, and everything was fine for a while until now
3. If i click on the down arrow by the "allowing Pop-Ups box there is an option to turn pop-up controls on (then the box says "blocking pop-ups" ), then the option changes to turn pop-up controls off which is the one currently selected. I do not remember installing this but could it be part of AOL because the other option is "set up Pop-up control preferences" which is an AOL box gives me the option to block pop ups from AOL sites, which is not selected. There does not seem to be an option to turn the whole thing off
4. When i started up my system this morning, i got a message which i have see from time to time which says " Debug Assertion ffailed " and a message about "Natural Colorload.exe" I am given the option to Cancel, Retry, or Ignore. If i ignore, i can see nothing wrong, if i re-try then i get a message about sending an error report to microsoft.
5. Strangely, all programmes i try seem to be running fine this morning, ie not returning me to the desktop, and i have changed nothing since last night.
I appreciate how difficult this may be to resolve. Thanks very much for your interest.

Now you have mentioned AOL, PWS, I'm wondering if that could be something to do with the problem.  AOL does tend to do funny things sometimes, and not always what you want.  To be honest, never having used it, I'm not even sure how AOL works.  Do you actually have to have it running to be able to use your PC at all, or could you possible try to run the games without AOL running?

Well, I haven't any more suggestions, but I'm sure someone will come up with an answer sooner or later.