I am using McAfee for my virus protection. As far as I know, it is doing a good job. My protection is automatically updated. My computer seems to be running pretty good except this drop down menu problem. I appreciate the suggestions about updating to IE8. Have they worked out most of the bugs? When you download it....will it download over the IE6 that I am using now? I really appreciate all the help and suggestions. Thanks for all your help. Larry

Well, the computer has been running very slowly, and I've tried about everything else and the only program I've had any problems with has been IE8. I've stopped using IE8 and have been using FireFox, but in my infinite wisdom I decided to try to get rid of IE8 on this computer since I've been using it until the other one is running properly. Only it wasn't real bright to mess with the only computer that was running fairly well. Lesson learned! I tried reinstalling IE8 and got a message that said it didn't load properly. I even tried to uninstall it again, but still got the same error message.

I would not do the one through windows update and go online with out the protection especially since you said you had a problem with it when doing it that way before. The stand alone file you simply select to download it to your pc, to like your desktop or where ever you choose, then once you have the internet connection disabled and have your security programs off then go to where you downloaded that file to and double click it to begin the install of it. Yes you can remove IE8 through add remove before you do sp3 and it will go back to IE6, then as soon as you are back online (with your security programs back on) from the install of sp3 go immediately to your windows updates site and get any other updates and you should be offered IE8. the guidelines link Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Installation Guidelines where to download the stand alone sp3 file from, click the download button and save to your pc, ignore any info there saying it is for IT professionals and not for single pc, this is the only download and is the one everyone uses when not doing it through windows updates. Windows XP Service Pack 3 as to foxit reader, it is a much better choice than Adobe but you do have to make sure it is always updated to the latest version because it also has been targeted by the bad guys. Opening pdf files online has always been a bad habit that is not something new but now more are hitting it with some bad exploits. So whether or not you choose to continue opening them online would be up to you. Since you have foxit now have you removed the Adobe Pdf reader? if not you do still need to keep it updated because having any program on the pc that has not been updated can be a security risk.

Here is the listing from whocrashed. I see that it refers to avast antivirus. When I initially tried to install my new IE* I believe that I had disabled Avast for 10 minutes. But I admit that I have forgotten to disingage it in all of my other actions. I will send this and perhaps I will have time to use your routine above to try uninstalling ie8 again with avast disabled and get back again. If I had any sense, I would have tried system restore. I haven't really done that much with this computer and it likely would have done the trick in the first place. System Information (local) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- computer name: I4000 windows version: Windows XP Service Pack 3, 5.1, build: 2600 windows dir: C:\WINDOWS CPU: GenuineIntel Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.00GHz Intel586, level: 15 1 logical processors, active mask: 1 RAM: 1073143808 total VM: 2147352576, free: 2027573248 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crash Dump Analysis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crash dump directory: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump Crash dumps are enabled on your computer. On Wed 8/29/2012 1:32:48 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini082812-05.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: aswsp.sys (aswSP+0x18654) Bugcheck code: 0xC2 (0x40, 0x0, 0xFFFFFFFF80000000, 0x0) Error: BAD_POOL_CALLER file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\aswsp.sys product: avast! Antivirus company: AVAST Software description: avast! self protection module Bug check description: This indicates that the current thread is making a bad pool request. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: aswsp.sys (avast! self protection module, AVAST Software). Google query: aswsp.sys AVAST Software BAD_POOL_CALLER