Pardon my ignorance* but vst plugins are used for midi interface are they not?
Er, no... we are talking effects here, and that's all. Although there are a few rogue applications that get installed that look like effects that aren't, and the common ones that cause problems are in the banned list, along with anything that says it's a VSTi or DXi. But if, by some mischance you have one of these installed that
isn't on the banned list, for instance because it was introduced after Audition was shipped, then it could still screw the system during install. But at this stage, the VST diagnostics tool should have started, and given you the opportunity to remove it as a problem.
I have a problem with a nero 7 download from the nero site that wouldn't start and when i went to add/remove hardware would not be removed so eventually I just went and removed all the program files but my machine still thinks it's there, I think.
Yes it's very likely to think that - the significant thing that you haven't done, and can't do, is edit out the registry entries that were created during installation. Which is why the OS probably thnks it's still there... You simply can't
do an uninstall like that; that's what the uninstaller is there for.
I have adobe flash player active x. The thing is I'm so ignorant of what constitutes a direct x or vst plugin, how to recognize? And if I have to remove the flash player then I'll have to think about dedicating this computer for audition and use my old pentium 2 for web and other things until I can at least afford a p3 or higher. Is there any way around such problems?
Dedicated DAWs are always a much better idea. Having a machine connected to the outside world is always an invitation for trouble to occur, and it usually does sooner or later.
At the moment, it sounds as though the only real fix for your problems is going to be a clean installation of everything, including the OS - primarily because you've got out of control software removal, and a few other dodgy things going on as well - that's never a good sign. But overall, I think that you need to be a lot more savvy about what's going on in your machine, or get someone who is to install stuff for you - you seem to be getting a lot of things mixed up and confused. If you treat a PC in a way that it really doesn't want to be, then it's going to kick back - and it sounds as though it is.
*I am quite prepared to pardon your ignorance - that's not a problem at all. But, you will have to accept that there will inevitably be consequences as a result of it.