[scdgoofy]

I apologize in advance about the length of this post.

I currently have Yahoo Messenger installed on my wife's laptop (Win XP Home). However, every time the computer is restarted, the installation wizard screen of Messenger comes up. Clicking the "cancel" button will exit the program, but it still comes back every time. Clicking the "next" button causes installation to begin and it re-installs correctly. (But, to be clear, this program is already installed on the computer when the install wizard pops up.)

Being tired of having this install wizard pop up all the time, I went to Control Panel to "add remove programs" with the intent of permanently uninstalling it. However, to my dismay, clicking on add/remove also caused the wizard to pop up. I started trying other icons in the control panel and found that about half of them caused the install wizard to pop up (including "display", "system" and my logitech camera controls). Once the install wizard comes up and I cancel out of it (or complete the install), I am still unable to open any of these essential functions on the computer because it pops up again. Yahoo Messenger install wizard has essentially taken over my computer.

Here's what I've done to try to fix this so far, all to no avail:

-uninstall Messenger from the "Program Files/Yahoo/Messenger/UNWISE" program - no luck and no luck after a clean install
-manually delete the entire Messenger and/or Yahoo folders - no luck and no luck after a clean install
-reboot in safe mode - still pops up
-uninstall and reinstall in safe mode
-use task manager to close all background programs and uninstall and reinstall
-uninstall and reinstall with Norton anti-virus turned off

One thing I did notice was that when the task manager was open and the install wizard pop up, a temp file showed open. In one instance, the temp file was "glb14.tmp-0596A862.pf" located in the C:Windows/Prefetch folder. But, it is generally a different .tmp file name every time it opens. I deleted all the temp files from the prefetch folder, but no luck.

Yahoo help is uterly useless, telling me in their most recent "help" response that "We believe that the problem you were experiencing was a transient one that shouldn't persist." Righto and the problem is not past tense!

I'd be eternally grateful if anybody could offer any assistance.

Thanks... -goof

(Internet connection is DSL through Linksys wireless router and I'm using Internet Explorer 6.0.)