Thank you all, very much. Yes znod, I should never allow a husband to take a computer to be 'fixed'.
For the last 17 years, I have almost always used my desktops. However, I became laid up last year and had to use my little Inspiron 1525 laptop. Worked ok most of the time, but occasionally and always after updating, I would get a message stating NTLDR was missing. Most of the time, I was able to fix it myself, but the last time, I just couldn't. Husband found a 'local' on the net, who said he could 'fix' it. Well he didn't of course. All he did was install W8 and the dreaded NTLDR still comes up. I can overcome it by turning it on a certain way, but with W8, I cannot use some of the programmes I always use on my desktop, which still runs Vista.
I am fairly sure I have the original disks somewhere, when I can get up and about again, and/or will follow the instructions here.
Over the months I have been ill, I have of course, built up a lot of new Favourites, so I suspect I had better file them in Dropbox, before doing anything.
Thanks again, to all who answered. This is most appreciated.
Mo