albert- If your wife used Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, it has removed most, but not all, of McAfee. (If she did something else, like only deleted the shortcut for McAfee, it's still there). You can go to the link posted above for the McAfee Uninstaller, download it, and run it to remove everything. I believe it works even if you have already done a partial removal, but not sure. At any rate it won't screw anything up to try it. Also, I've never seen McAfee automatically bill for a subsciption renewal without your consent. I suspect one of you clicked on a button somewhere - like in an email to you from McAfee, or in an update notice as the program approached the anniversary date - and that you agreed to renew your subscription, and probably had to enter your credit card info for the subscription. Lastly, reassure me that you are running some other kind of antivirus software on your computer.

One of those messages that you "forwarded" (which you should never do)probably had a nasty enclosed. It could be a trojan rather than a virus. Do you have an antispyware program on your computer like "Malwarebytes" its free. Suggest you download it, install it, update it then run it. Another good one which complements Malwarebytes is Spywareblaster, Its always running in the background and keeps these nasties from loading. You just have to update it weekly or so and its free as well. What service package of XP do you have (hopefully XPSP3) To find out right click on "my computer" select properties and that info should be in the box that appears

>>>> "Well I will offer my weak ideas. I never worry about what a virus or Trojan is..." Me neither..... But then I run only Debian or a Slackware based Linux distributions on PCs here since early 2003....I do run an outgoing firewall though, though not much more than that "security"-wise, and I never ever run as "root". I have been online full time 24/7 for as long as 8 months non-stop running as many as 19 programs and 4 or 5 browsers with 20-something windows & 123 tabs open simultaneously----and other than the very occasional browser hang-up....never an issue, and not a reboot or a defrag or a registry anything, ever..... The link may be of some interest to you, or not. It is one of the preferred by noobies distributions, and it offers more to learn/do than any of the MSFT high dollar-ties you into MSFT formats forever-operating system. Though I have given out a few copies of VectorLinux ( http://www.vectorlinux.com/ ) or my personal fave SimplyMepis ( http://www.mepis.org/ ) or my other personal fave...Knoppix!!! ( http://www.knoppix.com/ )... Knoppix, never ever leave home w/o it...I take a Knoppix CD everywhere with me, there's one in the glove-box right now even...... But what the heck, eh? The most modern, safe, and secure, and very definately superior and it's, lemme see, oh yeah....free A much better deal much more secure than any MSFT OS and software that you can buy, which BTW you can not under any circumstances even put an MSFT OS you BOUGHT & PAID FOR on any except the >>>one PC What the heck... it's free, it's easy.... and it's damn sure secure......If it's good enough for the National Security Agency to base its own systems and software on, you reckon maybe it's good enough for you too? Oh yeah.... and the SecurityEnhancedLinux packages are so secure that the NSA has released, and released for free too, all the SEL code and software into the public domain, and released it all free of charge too...something that all yer friends in Redmond were hoping would have never happened.... Hope you found this somewhat useful..... Oh yeah, and if you like a particular distribution, you can even make 1,000,000 copies and give them all away, should that be your desire. More and more distro's are even including software so that you can "customize" a distro to your liking and then make a million copies of your newly modified OS, and give away the resulting OS/software package, with your name on it even if that's what you want to do with it........You should give Redmond a call and ask about doing that with an MSFT issued OS... And now, it's off to the woods with Sasha and Duke....the big dogs!!! HAGD!!! Here is a link that might be useful: A more secure solution...

I had the exact same problem when I renewed my Avast subscription 3 days ago. It says "Missing runtime error" Or something like that. Went to Staples and they messed with it for over an hour and couldn't fix it. Finally took it to a friend who is a computer geek and as soon as I told him about installing the Avast, he knew what it was. It has something to do with the Firewall of the new Avast. He had to reset it to allow things to work. I know nothing about computers but maybe that's enough info to help you.