Problems running after installation

Hello,
I'm having a little hiccup and cannot figure out what's going on. Over the past couple of days, I have tried to open word docs from an email; and tried to download a file just recently. Each time, the system says it is saving the doc to my desktop or downloading the file; whichever the case may be. However when I go to check my desktop for the word doc or click on run after the file has downloaded - nothing happens. The file is no where to be found.