I just reinstalled XP & down loaded Spybot. When I go to update definitions it does fine. When I click to do a spyware scan it gets this message. I also get one with AVG anti virus. I have not activated windows(it will not take my product key) could this have anything to do with it? The programs that came with windows seem to work fine.

Woops forgot to attach pic. Also the only way out of this screen is to reboot with the power button

Right-click the start menu and choose "explore". Expand "My computer" and show me a screen capture of what you see. I'm betting your main hard drive is like ... D:\ or E:\ or F:\ and you have a removable drive as C:\

not sure how to do a screen capture but it shows the hard drive as F:(can I change that?) 31/2 floppy as A: Zip drive as C: one CD burner as D: & the other CD drive as E:

lol. ok there's your problem. well, you can change it but there's no telling what might happen, your OS might go nuts.

here's the deal:

Right-click the My Computer icon. Choose Manage. Go into Disk Management. In the bottom of the right-hand pane (the grey area) you will See a list of disks. Right-click the Zip drive and choose "Change drive letter or paths". Change the Zip drive to be drive "Z". Let it do its thing, then reboot. See if the problem still happens afterwards.

DO NOT CHANGE THE HARD DRIVE LETTER FROM F: to C: yet!!! It may not be necessary and the results could be unpredictable/

That fixed it! So what you are saying is I am stuck with the hard drive being the F: drive?

yes and it won't hurt a thing. this just tends to be a problem if your C:\ drive is a "removable media" drive. as long as this isn't the case, you're fine.

bad things CAN happen if you were to change the drive letter of the drive with Windows on it, i've wrecked entire installations doing that. i try not to recommend that to people except in majorly screwy circumstances as a last alternative.