IE7 Not Working

[vinyl-junkie]

A couple of days ago, I had one of those Windows update security patch things download itself on my PC in the middle of the night, at which time my computer also restarted itself. Since then, Internet Explorer hasn't worked. Email works fine. Firefox works fine. Just not IE. I've tried restarting my computer again to see if that would help, but no joy. Any idea what I can do to solve this problem, short of reinstalling Windows?

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

You could try uninstalling the updates which you can do through the control panel > add/remove programs. The only reason I can see this happening is the Microsoft Genuine Validation update was installed and some how couldn't validate your copy of XP (not accusing you of anything though). Try installing Windows Media Player 11. If you can't due to validation issues then the same could be for IE7.

[TheShaner]

You can also try restoring to a point before the patch installation and see if that helps. The patch may have changed some settings that caused IE7 to get buggy on you.

-Shane

[vinyl-junkie]

OK, I took the first suggestion and went with it - Aero's suggestion to uninstall the update. The PC was required to restart, which I dutifully did. Then the same update which caused the problem in the first place immediately downloaded. I installed that and went through the same process again. This time, Panda Internet Security popped up a window saying something that Internet Explorer had changed and did I want to allow that to access the internet. I clicked Yes, but still IE7 would not work. I then went into Panda, deleted Internet Explorer from the list of allowed programs and re-added it. Now IE7 works again! :thumbsup: I guess if I had known the problem was with Panda Internet Security and not the Windows update, I could have saved myself some grief. Oh well.

BTW, Aero, this is a genuine Microsoft product I'm working with. Not to worry though. I didn't take offense at your pointing out that the problem could be with a not genuine MS product. If it's a potential cause of the problem, it's worth pointing it out.

Thanks, Aero and TheShaner, for your help!