It sounds like you uninstalled it before the update finished. Try this…
start>run
Then type “msconfig” and hit “enter”
Look on the “startup” tab and find an entry for cometbird update and uncheck it. Then when you restart, if everything works normally you can save the changes.
Try a utility called autoruns. It’s freeware, available out there on the net.
It will show you/let you control everything about your computer’s startup.
It’s pretty intimidating, so look mostly at the “Logon” tab, and the first few entries. This is where you’ll find the major things that are set to automatically start. You can uncheck them, and (usually) you can right-click them and delete them.
This should help you find and get rid of your blank entry (as well as many other things you may not want).
post a screenshot showing all the startup items in the msconfig utility, or try the app kluelos suggested. Once you break the vicious circle of the failed installation, you can then reinstall the product. You might also want to have a look on firefox support forum. Cometbird uses firefox source code so any bugs related to installation will be shared across both platforms.
Also I’ll add that with millions of users, we’ve never seen this problem before, so I suspect something else is going on with this system, perhaps some malware?
That blank entry in msconfig tells me you’ve got registry problems. Autoruns might be able to clean that up, but you’re honestly at the point of needing to reinstall Windows. Anything you can salvage short of that is gravy.