TO CONCLUDE THIS ISSUE ;-
I downloaded from FileHippo in Safe Mode + Networking.
It downloaded in seconds without any problems. I did forget to enable my AV security though. Nobody is perfect.
A final point - I have only in the past few days had my browser updated from IE7 to IE8, this "may" have caused a problem with these particular sites downloads, IE8 seems more acutely security conscious in classifying perfectly trustworthy sites as threats. Every time I went to a download site, FileHippo and Major Geeks for example, I got an IE stopper message come up saying ;-
"To protect your security, IE has restricted this site from downloading files to your computer - check options"
Checking download OK, the downloads then froze up every time at 99% and I played "crash the computer" again. I began to look forward to it.
I never got the IE8 stopper message in Safe Mode + Networking.
Curious why IE relaxes it`s guard in Safe Mode. None of this ever happened with IE7.
KAS