slime

Hello Casey, Many thanks for your advice. I used the Revo uninstaller, and removed the previous Ad-aware programme and also three entries of visual c+++ runtime. Two redistributable and one update. Also all traces of these programmes were removed from the registry. I then rebooted and started the 8.2 setup. The result I regret is "Cannot load runtime etc." So I downloaded this, rebooted and tried again, with exactly the same result. Since the 8.1 version is more than adequate for my needs, I will continue to use this for the time being. Many thanks for your quick response and help.

I have been using for sometime the the 8.1 verion of free ad-aware. A banner appeared advising me of an updated version. which I downloaded. Followed by messages such as "unable to uninstall old version". I did this via add and remove programmes onlyto get the message "unable to install visuall c+++ runtime etc " Installed this item ad nauseum, only to receive the same message re unable to install runtime. I came to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with my computer and that the fault lay with the 8.2 version of ad-aware. I then obtained the 8.1 setup exe from another computer, and lo and behold it installed without any problems whatsoever. It may be possible that the 8.2 version is incompatible with some versions of win xp. So possibly,the only answer for those unable to mess around with the registry is to reinstall the earlier version. Perhaps Lavasoft can resolve this issue, and in the meantime make available the 8.1 version for the benefit of computer beginners.