Completely messed up

[Old_Professor]

I installed v. 8 on my laptop and am now completely unable to get anything to work.  I tried installing 8 on my home computer, the one I wish to remotely access, but that didn't help.  I thought I should drop back to 7, so I uninstalled on both home and laptop and installed 7.  That isn't working either.  My home computer is running XP and the laptop has Win 7.  I'm ready to start over again.  What version is stable and recommended?

I had been using the web viewer on the laptop previously; that was fine. I see no reason to install a separate viewer.  Also, I think that the web application is more likely to get out of my employer's firewall.  Suggestions very much needed. Thanks in advance.