HP Pavilion Laptop running Windows XP

After my last restart, computer is trying to install a "PhotoGallery"...gets part way through when a Microsoft .NET Framework error message pops up that I can't rid of. It says "An unhandled exception has occurred in a component in your application. click continue and application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. Object reference not set to an instance of an object." When I press Continue, it doesn't...and I can't X out of it. I can't get the computer to stop trying to install the program...and consequently can't install anything else (like another spyware program) since it thinks the computer is currently installing this program.

I had just run Ad-Aware and SpyBot and had ALSO tried to get some clip art off an old image disk that came with my printer. Not sure if either of these acts caused or added to this PROBLEM. Please help!!!!

Thanks.So this program is starting up with your computer? Disable it with msconfig...

Click start
click run
type "msconfig"
click the "startup" tab
uncheck anything that looks like photogallery.exe or anything thats location is something like "c:\program files\photogallery"
click apply
restart computer
you'll get a warning saying changes were detected, just check the box and press ok.

OR

if you have windows defender
start it
click tools
click software explorer
go to startup items
disable anything to do with photo galleryThanks for the response.

I tried the msconfig THING and didn't see any .exe that could have been PhotoGallery in the Start Up tab.

I then remembered that I had recently added a printer to our home network and know that they often include photo gallery programs. I uninstalled the print driver and after several restarts, my problem seems to be resolved.

Again, thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks for posting BACK Let me guess.......it was an HP ? ?