>just to follow up - having de/reinstalled twice yesterday in dealing with my sp3 problem, I note that the CTRL F behaviour remains as it was. I still can't use it within a form method.

How about Alt+N? That's the recommended one that's shown in the Find Window, and it's what I've been using. Have you tried that? I hadn't been using Ctrl+F (I see it on the menu), though I did test it and that works the same way as Alt+N on my machine...

I wouldn't be shocked to find that your Ctrl+F shortcut is being set by another app somewhere, and somehow set globally. I have an even worse problem on my machine occasionally, something resets the Tab key to open Win Explorer every time it's depressed every week or two, and I have to reboot to reset it. I've looked everywhere, and finally just given up and learned to live with it :)