[ubuntu] multiple issues appeared in past few days

Hi, a few days ago I noticed several strange things happening. I noticed flash crash on BBC iplayer - I could not get it to start properly even after re-installing - it will load, but when you press play it crashes instantly. The Adobe Flash check page says everything looks good. Since then I have also noticed that all images on Firefox are appearing corrupted - see attached Lionel Richie

Original image: http://media.ticketmaster.co.uk/tm/e...ges/55400a.jpg

In addition, Chrome has stopped working all together (it was working perfectly before this) - deleting and re-installing does not help.

However, I can get it to work once by reinstalling unity. When Chrome is working, I get the same image and Flash issues I get in Firefox. When I close Chrome, it will not open again - unless I re-install unity again , that is.

To re-install unity I did:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install unity
Though as mentioned previously, this only lets Chrome run once before it stops working again.
Some details on my graphics card (though not convinced its graphics card related)
sudo lshw -C video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Broadwell-U Integrated Graphics
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 09
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:62 memory:f0000000-f0ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:3000(size=64)

I have done a memory check, disk check, motherboard check, done an antivirus scan - all passed with no issues

I Also tried installing ubuntu on a different partition - but getting same issues - in-fact images were corrupted on the install screen, and it was loading from an iso on a usb stick

more recently i'm getting ssl issues - I have to load any ssl page several times before it works and when trying to ssh onto a separate server im getting bad mac address errors

I would be helpful of any help / ideas as to what might be going on. (even if I can just identify if it is hardware or software)

thanks