@dasilvarsa, @voyager56, @lolypop000 & @x-trail:
Thank you very much for all the help & support. It was worth it! I made it!!!!! I followed all and each advise and you were all right. My problem everyone knows already what it was, so now here is the solution for others facing it to manage without plucking all your hair lol. Ok, step 1 - following x-trail's advice I sent kaspersky for a pack of *****ers at the corner store; step 2 - I kept my laptop's win7 beside me but this time I sat facing my old pc running XP (as per dasilvarsa's suggestion); step 3 - voyager56 was right, although my pc recognized the nuvi it never meant the drivers were installed (or updated, maybe?) - I'm not an expert in software to be honest, but as soon as I installed freshly downloaded drivers from garmin's website the updater recognized my nuvi right away; step 4 - followed lolypop000 procedure, like so many times I did before but this time the updater "flew" the application and in a few instants I had the software loaded in my "brand new" 3490. I already installed the logo as well and next steps will be working around the things that are missing (voice command and whatever I find as I still don't know the 34xx UI). Be back with updates.. I mean doubts, most likely lol!