Presently I have two installation problems. After installing Mozilla each time I attempt to start Mozilla the following message is displayed: ‘This application has failed to start because xpcom.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem’. The file it is unable to find is C:DOCUME~1…LOCALS~1Temp
s_tempxpcom.nsinxpistub.dll. A second problem is when attempting to install SpywareBlaster 3.1 the following message appears: ‘The program has been damaged, possibly by a bad sector of the hard drive or a virus. Please reinstall it’. Reinstalling does not help. The computer is running Windows XP.

Uninstall Mozilla and then search for the GRE directory on your computer. This may be located at C:Program FilesCommon Filesmozilla.orgGRE. If not, search your hard drive for the directory. Once you have found the directory, delete the folder and its contents. You should also find and delete the C:Program Filesmozilla.org directory if still present. If you cannot find either of these folders then don’t worry, as they may have been automatically removed when you uninstalled Mozilla. Restart the computer and reinstall Mozilla.

Should you still have problems, we should make sure that you have permission to access the Mozilla registry entries. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘regedit’ (without the quotes) and click OK. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREmozilla.org. Select this registry key and go to the ‘Edit’ menu > ‘Permissions’¦’. Click the ‘Add’¦’ button and type ‘Everyone’ (without the quotes). Click ‘Check Names’ and the name should become underlined. Click OK. Now in the list of names select ‘Everyone’ and check the ‘Allow’ column for ‘Full Control’. Click OK. Repeat this procedure for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMozilla. Once you have finished close the Registry Editor and restart the computer.

Another thing to check is whether your Mozilla directories are read-only. Use the Windows Explorer to find your Mozilla directories and check their properties. If they are read-only, uncheck this property. If you are unable to change the property, make sure you are logged-in as Administrator and use CTRL-ALT-DEL to ensure that no Mozilla processes are running.

Regarding your problem with SpywareBlaster, this seems to be a well known problem when running SpywareBlaster 3.1. Firstly, try downloading the latest version of SpywareBlaster (version 3.2) as the new version may fix the problem. If not, the problem you are experiencing is known to be caused by the CoolWebSearch trojan (or variant thereof), as mentioned in the answer provided to Tom S. in this column. Download CWShredder (www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html) and clean any versions of CWS which may be installed on your computer. Please let me know whether this works or not, since if it doesn’t there are some more complicated procedures we can attempt.