Desktop Software and How To Questions

Since the new year, I've had nothing but issues with HPSA. I was originally running version 8 that came with my laptop. But I started getting notifications that couldn't be marked as read. Then I had a red notification from within the app asking me to upgrade to a newer version. This would be version 9.

I then started getting similar issues with this newer version. I kept getting a notification saying my firewall was not setup (which it was) every few days. Everytime I marked the notification as 'read', it would come back a few days later. So yesterday, I decided to uninstall and re-install version 8. 

Now after the program has installed, I either get the red notification asking me to upgrade to version 9 or I push it through manually by clicking the 'about' tab then clicking 'update to newer version'. When I do this, the update process begins but when it finishes, there's no actual program that's been installed. All that's there is a blank shortcut on the desktop. When I click on it, it says "You'll need a new app to open this hpsupportassistant" Look for an app in Windows Store. 

When I go to C:\SWSetup to look at the install files where all HP software installs from, I click on installHPSA.exe and I get an error message saying 'HP Support Assistant was not installed successfully. An error occurred during the installation: 183".

In the end, I have to go to the HP Support Assistant site again and re-download version 8 and stick with that as version 9 is obviously no longer installing. I;ve performed all of the abover steps about 10 times prior to posting this. And yes, I've done a clean-up and restart after uninstalling to make sure I've got rid of any excess files.

So I want to know:

1) Why are some of us getting these random notifications that can't be marked as 'read' on both versions of 8 and 9?

2) Why is version 9 no longer installing despite being prompted to upgrade?

3) Why does the webpage dashboard not load up on Chrome browsers? But when the dashboard does open on Firefox it says I've got messages but when I click on them it leads me to  broken webpages? 

It seem that the whole HP Support Assistant experience (both apps and webpage) are not working as they should recently. What's going on?

Thanks