After being notified of a JAVA update, I downloaded and attempted the installation. During the installation however, I got an unrecoverable error mentioning an unavailable file and was told installation failed. That evening when attempting to shut down the computer, I got both Word and IE messages that the programs were still in use; but neither showed up in any window or in the task manager. I had to get out of both rather inelegantly ;) The next day, IE was unable to pull up anything- even my home page. JAWS was having trouble reading many different areas of windows also. I used FF to get to the JAVA page and download the latest update. Then, while trying to copy the Access Bridge files to the appropriate folders, I found that I was prevented from copying the windowsaccessbridge.dll to the windows/system 32 folder. I saw a statement that you cannot use a screen reader when installing the bridge, so unloaded JAWS just long enough to delete the old windowsaccessbridge.dll; and After that, I had no problem copying the file to the windows/system 32 folder.
In the process of all this, I saw that my previous JAVA had been uninstalled during the failed installation. As soon as I installed the JAVA update, I could access my IE home page again. I have never encountered difficulty installing JAVA or the Access Bridge with JAWS running previously. Anyone have any insight on this nightmare? Cher For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
