I followed closely your instructions, Bob3160. I too have used Avast for at least 4 years. Never had a problem from Avast like this. I even intalled it in Limited mode itself and it installed fine. Reboot into limited and no go. Get that same error. In Admin it works fine. Back to AVG again. This is it. There is something missing from Avast 7 to Avast 8. Maybe is just isn't for XP anymore. Planning on giving this old beast a big upgrade sometime this year before XP Pro dies on April 8, 2014. Thank you all for your help and God Bless you all.