Help! "xxxxx has encountered a problem and needs to close" errors!

Hi all,

I've been getting the

"<program or file name> has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience"

error very frequently now with every new prog I try to install but noticed that its mainly new progams downloaded that won't install. The same message appears regardless whether I reboot and install. Tried recently to install:

Live MSN Messenger 8.0 after downloading all 15Mb of it from the MS site and then the dreaded error appears!

Can someone please help me determine what's causing this hiccup and why?

Am using an AMD Athlon 1800+ 298MhZ based Sony Vaio with 256Mb Ram running XP home ed. SP1.

Appreciate any pointers or solutions....Gracias!

Cheers
D'Fly

 

I would upgrade to SP2 if you can and rule out potential probs with the OS.

 

Yup...just did a BitDefender Online Scan which picked up and deleted 4 infected files mainly:-

Virus Detected

Trojan.Downloader.Small.AYP
2

Trojan.Downloader.IstBar.Z5
1

Backdoor.Rbot.DF
1

And also AdAware, SpyBot & Nortons AV but alas problem still there. Doh!

Hmmm....might update to SR2 if that helps?