Yes and no!

Just came back to this this afternoon after abandoning yesterday. Turned off Windows firewall which was on. Made no difference.

Then thought, I run Norton, did I install it on this machine (it's a test machine, so isn't switch on all the time so I don't all ways bother). Oh yes its installed, but it's complaining because the license has expired. Well I won't bother updating the license I will just remove it.

Bang, Ping works and more importantly I was only using ping to test network connectivity because a network application I was using wasn't working, unsurprisingly that now works as well.

Leaves me to conclue that Norton shuts ports/protocols when it expires, being a cynic, perhaps to make you believe you MUST buy another license, which IMHO is highly unethical.

Thank you both for your help!
Iain