Guys as a noob to Blender I am really struggling.......

played the videos read, some of the manual/user guides, some of it makes sense, much of it doesn't.

Here's where I'm at:

just a simple circle, extrude/scaled a couple of times with a material applied (I think, though I've yet to see a render of it).

Q1: I installed 2.35a over the top of 2.35, when Blender loads, the splash screen still just says 2.35?? am I running the 'a' version or not?

Q2: selecting the top left viewport, pressing TAB has no effect... pressing A (not shiftA) gives a little box with an incrementing counter. I saw this mentioned in another thread recently - bug?

Q3: rendering the topleft viewport (supposedly the camera view) gives a blank render.

Q4: selecting Menu: View>Align View>Align Active Camera to View

Doesn't align the camera, it actually moves the selected mesh object as seen by its location changing in the other three views (and dissapearing from view in the topleft viewport).

Conclusions after 5 days: This is becoming a frustrating and disheartening experience. I've built nothing and rendered nothing :(

Bob