Thanks for the suggestion, but I have done the following to no avail...
disk clean up
shouted at computer
made tea
cleared Cache
virus scan
made tea
turned computer off and on again
defrag (whatever that is... i pressed a button)
shouted again
broke out the easter eggs early
uninstalled Chrome.... reinstalled chrome
made tea
removed add ons ... disk clean up..... cleared cache .......something with the registry ... rebooted chrome
started on the beer
used fire fox
The last seemed to solve the problem