Well my help may not be much help but I never ever close any programs that run in the background when installing a new one. I close all programs I might be using and are on the desktop of course.

usually what has been said is that you can shut everything but explorer and systray.
The reason many times it tells you to install in safe mode is because in safe mode all those "running Processes" are not yet running like they are in normal start up mode so therefore you do not have to do all the shut down of the running stuff.

I generally just make sure there are no obvious programs running, I shut my browsers, close all email applications, if it says to shut down specific programs I do that, if it says disconnect from internet I do that.
The rest I leave alone.
I would guess everyone has their own method.

I can't thank both of you enough for trying to help shepherd me through this.

So far, the instructions I've read havn't suggested I start in Safe Mode (I guess I really should learn how to do that!)

In the past I just closed out my word processing and "went for it". There wasn't much on my old PC to run (I think there are maybe 8 entries in the task manager)

OK, I'm good with 'no obvious programs'. I'm not-so-good with Spywareblaster which says it runs in the background even when it's off ???? With Spywareblaster, do I disable it during installation?

Thanks, guys!

J

No, you won't need to disable Spywareblaster---only those programs you have open on your desktop.

Grandms - thank you.

If this works, I owe everyone a big slice of devilsfood cake!

J