Of late I'm getting a lot of the 'IE caused kernel32 to crash' sort of message. Which of course knocks out IE. I note that the version of kernel32 in SYSTEM is 4.10.0.2226 whereas the version in CABS is 4.10.0.2225 - could this be something to do with it?  

   I doubt that the different version number has anything to do with it.  My guess is that either something that IE is doing is crashing kernel32 or another program is.