A while back I took one a server based adwords spy tracking program and installed it on my hard drive (my hosting company doesn't allow these programs). After installing Apache on my hard drive, I followed the instructions for a hard drive install and it works great. There's another program I'm attempting to install on my hard drive. I followed the previous instructions and I've created the database and setup admin privileges. When I attempt to run the install I keep getting an error saying, "please enter a valid email address" in the dialog box. But the email address is the same one I used in the setup and it's valid. Any idea what might be going on here? It seems like it should be a simple fix but it's beyond my meager skills. Thanks for any help you can offer.

If we knew the program would that help us? "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

Thanks for your reply. I doubt you'd know the program, it's a niche program that is used for blogging. I was thinking that the "please enter a valid email address" seemed like kind of a generic error message and that someone might be familiar with this kind of error. If you need any other info, please ask.

Sounds like spyware or malware or illegal in some states. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

There is nothing illegal about the program and it isn't malware or anything unethical. It's a legitimate software program but for some reason it's not recognizing that a clearly real email address has been entered in the email form field in setup. BTW, I first put my own personal email in the field before I found out that it needed a specific email address, and I still got the same error message as not recognizing it as a valid email address either. It's puzzling and I don't know how to go about correcting it -- but I do believe that someone on this forum will have the answer to this. Any other thoughts?

"There is nothing illegal about the program and it isn't malware or anything unethical" Is that why you're unwilling to state the name of the program, because it's 100% legit? "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Yes, I admit it. You've broken me down. How did I ever think I could pull anything over on you. Shame on me! :-) I didn't mention the name of the program because the odds of anyone being familiar with it are astronomical. But in the interest of full disclosure, it's name is AutomatedBloggerPoster. Let me add this in the case it will help. The program doesn't have a config file. Instead there is a RSS screen where all of the info is entered to create the install.php file -- and that's where my problem is. It did occur to me that it's probably possible to edit the install.php file, thus bypassing the RSS screen, and the program might work from there. Unfortunately, I only have limited knowledge about this and I would likely screw things up. So that's my update. Anyone have any thoughts on this for me? Thanks again.