Well, my report back on resolution is late but I got sick and didn't care to bother with a solution. So, here is what I did....
This thing was a PITA! I gave up after I couldn't make the process below work. Luckily for me, I perform backups! So, I dumped the system and restored from a point in late August. My thought here was that I probably installed or tweaked something I shouldn't have in recent history. As a result of going backwards a few levels, I would lose the offending item. So far so good. I made a backup of the "goofed" up system prior to performing restore just in case I find myself missing something. I'm thinking that won't happen as I keep all data, shortcuts, menus, toolbars, etc., on a separate drive. For anyone who doesn't believe in backups yet, it's things like this that can save you from a much bigger problem. Investing in a backup strategy, separating data from the system files, and having the backups written to a separate drive has made life less stressful. Yeah, it cost more, but it sure has saved time. After the restore, I went out to MS, retrieved all the updates, re-updated the virus defs, adaware, spywareblaster, and spybot search and destroy. I performed a full system scan and ran the spyware apps. Maybe my solution wasn't that elegant, but hey I think this worked! rlb Wayne, Thank-you for the suggestion to move to SP2. I have avoided it like the plague since I first tried installing back in late 2004. Totally hosed my system (I went into this with the list at that time). I was running RAID at the time and I came close to losing everything. After that, I was finding other reports of problems with my mobo, RAID and SP2. So, I stuck with SP1. Maybe the problem is corrected now....I don't know. I guess I could try again as I have a solid and sound backup process and I dumped RAID (currently). I'm definitely not ready to go back to RAID yet. Sounds like a test that needs to be performed. Don't know if I'll be able to squeeze it in this fall/winter. The holiday season (or getting ready for it) has started and my time is being drawn in other ways. -----Original Message----- I attempted a download of ie6 sp1 using opera (installed it to get access on the machine). I was able to download a file with the same name you've listed below but it was only 408Kb. So, I thought this was some special downloader file for getting the entire thing. It never worked. What is the size of the file when you download ie6setup.exe? I'll try getting copy off my wife's machine. It got a little late last night and I didn't have time. I really believe the inability to get to windows update and therefore fix it directly on the machine occurred when the nice lady at the bank was walking me through a ton of changes on the browser in an attempt to make it work. We moved fast and I didn't write a script to what was changed (extremely bad and stupid mistake that I will never do again....no matter how hard and fast the online help is trying to move me....). Consequently, I think she left me with a much more goofed up browser than what I started with..... Completely unrelated but my cable subscription is for 8000/768 and I am regularly getting 11900-12000 / 960. However, I'm worried that by messing with this problem, I'm going to end up lower....probably just superstition, but it matches my luck! Thanks for the info. I'll report back after I get a chance to mess with this. rlb -----Original Message----- Go to your wife's PC and download IE 6 ie6setup.exe then save it to a zip disk or CD. Its a setup file that will download and install the main IE 6 web browser for you. Then on your PC take that disk and copy the file to C:\ and run the IE setup file from there and you should be back in business. Download IE 6 SP1 <http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1e1550cb-5e5d-48f5 -b02b-20b602228de6&DisplayLang=en> -- ---------------------------------------- The WIN-HOME mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
