Number 234 - October 2002

WINDOWS CRASHES!
by Carl Tenning, Tacoma Open Group For Microcomputers
This was not your ordinary crash where the "Three Finger Salute" (Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys held together) would reboot the computer and have Windows back in operation. This time Windows came back with nothing but the desktop pattern; no Icons, no Task Bar, and no Start Button. I could not do anything. For all practical purposes, Windows was brain dead.     This all happened as a result of upgrading Internet Explorer from Version 5.5 to Version 6.0. I was happily using the computer the day before, when up pops a message that Microsoft has a critical update. So I let it load the update. After the update to IE6, the computer still worked, but I could not access my MSN Hotmail. Instead of getting the usual log-in screen, I got a text message, with a lot of data, but no email. Actually, it did log in, because I could access my portfolio under MSN Money. It would just not display my email. Well, after a couple of days I had had enough. I decided to uninstall IE6. This is done from Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs. It then gives you the option to select restoring the previous version of Internet Explorer, which I did.     After the restore operation, the computer reboots. That was when I had the problem. The only way that I could operate the computer at this point was to boot	from floppy with a diskette I made from the Startup Disk tab in Add/Remove Programs. So I tried re-loading Windows from the CD. But Windows still came up the same way, with no Icons, no Taskbar, and no Start Button. I even tried this twice with the same disappointing result.     At this point the only option seemed to be to reformat the hard drive and reload Windows to a clean disk. If it weren't for having the Startup diskette, the computer would be dead for good. This is the second time within the period of one year that I have had to reformat and reload. It took me two days to reload Windows and reload all of my applications. I wonder if there is any good backup application that can reload the system after the computer goes really dead? If there is, I sure could have used one.     Shortly after restoring my computer to life, I got another Critical Update notice from Microsoft. This one reportedly fixes a Restore problem in Windows Millennium. Since this computer was operating Windows Millennium, maybe that was the actual problem. For now, however, I will stick to Internet Explorer Version 5.5.     p.s. I have successfully upgraded to IE6 on a Windows 98SE machine.
Number 234 - October 2002