BleepingComputer.com: Cannot Access My Files or Install Programs

I'm having a FireFox problem which has led me to a second problem - I cannot run certain executables for whatever reason. I get the following error:

"Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access this item."

I am simply trying to REMOVE Online Armor Firewall from my machine, because I know it's inadvertently blocking firefox, but running the uninstaller DOES NOT WORK. I double click the uninstaller executable, and nothing happens.

I tried REINSTALLING Online Armor (so that I could once again attempt to uninstall it) and got the following error:

"Unable to execute file in the temporary directory. Setup aborted.

Error 5: Access is denied."

Two processess running on my machine, oacat.exe and oasrv.exe, are Online Armor related, and they both run at startup.

When I try to end these processess with Task Manager, I get the following error:

"The operation could not be completed.

Access is denied."

Any ideas?

Try removing them from your startup (Run>Msconfig>Startup). Then try to uninstall. If this does not work, see if the company that makes that software makes an Unintall utility like Norton does.

The recommended way to uninstall Online Armor is to run it's inbuilt uninstaller which can be accessed by using start - all programs -online armor -uninstall.

If for some reason this fails, then one should boot to Safe Mode and run the uninstaller from Safe Mode.

The user of third-party uninstallers is not recommended as it can, and does lead to unpredictable results, including system errors.

http://support.tallemu.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=3211

Thanks, running windows in safe mode allowed me to uninstall the software. Interestingly, although nothing Online Armor-related was in my startup, the two executables ran anyway, for whatever reason. However, they were not present in safe mode.

Now I'm simply stuck with this file-access problem. I've done some research and apparently there seems to be a connection between IE7 and file access restrictions, but I couldn't figure it out.