[Didz]

Ok! Slight progress and perhaps a for someone tech-savvy who will know WTF is causing this problem.

Slight progress: I managed yesterday to get the 32 bit version of Minion to install. Having uninstalled the original version which had stopped working, but only by changing the default installation folder from /user/appdata (which makes no sense on a Win7 PC anyway) to the more traditional /Programme Files/Minion location.

So, Minion is back on my PC. However, it still refuses to load. You can click it till the cows come home and it just ignores you.

However, in another fit of frustration I decided to to try and re-install the programme again/ I thought perhaps the previous installation was corrupted in some way. And it began the installation normally but then complained that there were other applications running which it needed to close in order to instal Minion.

Interestingly, what it listed were about a dozen instances of a programme called 'Minion' which it claimed were already running on my PC and could not be closed down. So, it seems that my frantic button bashing was actually launching Minion and it was running multiple times on my PC, but for some reason none of these instance reached the point in the installation process where they acknowledged that they were in fact 'running'.

To me this suggests that something is blocking Minions access to the internet database that allows it to determine which addons need updating, and that's why it never finishes its load process.

+++++
P.S. Another clue for the tech-savvy. I was checking my Personal Firewall settings, just in case something there was blocking Minion from connecting to its data sources, although these have not been changed in years and Minion was working perfectly prior to its last update. What i discovered was that according to my Network Security Tool Minion has an open TCP protocol connection , which is 'Listening' for a response, and presumably not getting one from the Remote IP.

This despite there being no visible evidence on my PC that Minion is even running.