Thanks for the links, Zep. Maime, that is what I wanted to do, only a couple at a time. She called me back last night, and she had gone into her update history and was going to try updating one at a time, going back to the oldest ones first. Haven't talked to her today as it has been a busy day and she is expecting company, so not sure I'll see or talk to her again for several days. In the meantime, I will study the information at the links, and we'll keep working at this. I will post again when there is more information.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, Raven I want to avoid using the Norton trial and get Avast on the new laptop before I go online. I re-downloaded Avast again, to a flashdrive using my XP machine. I was able to move it onto the Vista hard drive Downloads folder. But as before, it would not install. First window shows the default language - english. Next window - There was an error while completing the setup process. View setup log. I googled the main error line from the setup log, didn't find my exact problem, but found a few posts - all Avast related and also relating to various internet connections. So maybe once I get my wireless router hooked up tomorrow (cross fingers) this will install. I don't understand why that would matter, but what do I know! My XP computer is ATT DSL wired, which I am making wireless since I now have the laptop. That in itself is/will be a real learning experience. And I will definitely check out some of the tutorials. I think I will like Vista, just feeling a little inept at the moment.

The whole purpose of the pop up asking if you wanted to proceed is intended to protect you. It is confirming that you and not some Trojan is in charge and wanting the process to proceed. It would be far easier if you had copied all those programs to a CD, DVD, external hard drive or even a thumb drive. That way the pop up would have appeared once as you copied everything over and you would save quite a bit of time. Remember, the bad guys are indeed getting far smarter each day. Keeping ahead of them is a huge challenge.

it sounds to me like everything is downloading properly and is showing the download completed dialog box pop up but you just do not know where to find where the items have been sent to on your pc. As zep stated go to the zip file you saved and double click on it to extract the file simple as that. YOU must find the location of where you have your pc set to save your downloads. IE will give you the run or save dialog box Firefox will not it only gives you the save file dialog box and you must have it set up where to save your files to. To find out where you have yours set to go do this in firefox: Tool>options>MAIN tab> under downloads area make sure you have a check mark in Show the download window when downloading a file: Next is the option to select where the file goes, this is where your files will be going if you have a selection there in that box. You can change that to desktop or where ever you want the files to go to. OR you can put a check mark in the next item which is Always ASK ME WHERE TO SAVE FILES. Always hit OK when changing any items. This is what I choose to do that way each time I can tell it exactly where I want that file to go. I have a my downloads folder and in there I have individual folders for what every program I am downloading. If you go to the above and find what it lists as your current location for where it is set to store the downloaded files you will find there all these files you have been downloading. If you do not know how to open a zip file then you need to familiarize yourself with that. but if you are using windows xp it has a built in zip opener just double click on the zip file! "Opening a Zip file If you're using Windows XP, then your operating system has built-in support for Zip files. They are described as "Compressed (zipped) folders." Just double-click on a Zip file and it will open in Explorer, just like a folder. Double-click on a file inside the compressed folder and you may be able to open that too (but really, Windows has extracted a copy of the file to another location and is opening that, as described above.) But if you right-click on items in a compressed (zipped) folder, you'll notice that the same options don't appear on the pop-up menu. This shows that it is not a real folder." Opening a Zip file you do not need any other application to open a zip file no need to download any thing since windows already has one built in.