Hi This was happening to me too. At the suggestion of a friend, I downloaded Mozilla Firefox (a free internet navigation program.) All problems have since stopped. In addition, I get far fewer advertisements, no pop-ups, and download time is significantly shorter. If you're interested, the address follows: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Do you have Ccleaner installed? If so start it then click the 'Registry' button on the left side. Do not alter any settings, click 'Scan for issues'. The scan may find a few or more likely a few hundred entries, do not fear these are all obsolete or left over entries. Once the scan is complete you should click 'Fix selected issues' or something similar. Back up the registry when prompted and click to remove the items show. Close program, hopefully the issue will be resolved Note to lurkers, do not play in here unless you fully understand the implications. A wrong move and you will possibly have monumental problems. Under normal circumstances any obsolete entry in the registry is simply ignored by the computer. In not2bright's case this is a move to stop the aggravation at startup.

See that is where a problem may or may not occur I'm not a 100% here especially if it originally came with its own recovery disk. That being said I do not know what other options you have (To set up Xp now, press enter 2) You could try this it will wipe the disk and should reinstall xp, and this will take a good bit of time and you will need service pack2 unless it is already included on the disk you have. Then install a free virus program, firewall, and your internet software. How old is the pc? Let see if others chime in here also.

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.