Thank you all for your replies and information.
I am installing windows xp sp 3 today although,I too, had been under the impression sp3 was not a requirement.
I have Malwarebytes on my computer and ran it extensively and it did not find any viruses, trojans, etc. I also ran Drweb has a secondary precaution and it didn't find anything amiss either.
Previously I had Avast..hmmm...I think it was the version offered after 4.8..and removed that prior to downloading and installing this latest version.
I also made sure Malwarebytes accepted Avast..
This is a registered version and I only downloaded it yesterday..geez..I'm lost..maybe the day before yesterday.
In terms of attempting to run it more than once at a time..that was later on when I had discovered it wasn't self updating and thought I had cancelled that attempt, went into tools and changed to manual updating and tried it that way.
So..I am guessing there isn't a viable option in this case via downloading the Virus Def updates separately and installing that way as it hadn't worked when I tried it as suggested earlier today?