@ floydoid........well, sfc /scannow whirred away for a while, but alas to no avail as it kept asking, nay demanding, from time to time that I put a disc into drive F. The installation disc was in drive F, but that apparently was not sufficient. Maybe I need to make a slipstreamed XP/SP2 disc and try that.
However, that will for later, after I have finished important works such as the three word story etc.
@ UnkyUB, thanks for you imput. I did indeed do a google and there are, as you say, lots of refs. to hh.exe, but I could not find a source from which to download it.
Will try with a slipstream disc, and in the meantime will do a quick checkdisc.
All this for something that I never use, but as I mean to hand this machine onto one of my grandaughters, I thought that at least I could pass on a fully functioning one.
C' est la vie, as scottiesmum may say.