Has anyonoe seen this before?
Win 98 SE, I.E. 5.5, & O.E. 5.5. Ordinarily a very trouble-free, stable machine. A few days ago, O.E. stopped working, i.e. it gets to the splash screen and halts (locked up) and I.E. gets wacky, i.e. it will go to some sites and not others, takes a looong time to get to sites, that kind of thing. It takes 2 attempts with the 'Close Program' dialog to shut O.E. down, then the computer locks up on shutdown (blue screen of death). Tried everything. Dr. Watson showed no errors (?), used S.F.C. to check/replace several system files. No change. Decided to try download/upgrade to I.E. 6/O.E. 6, assuming (know what happens when you assume?) a corrupt file in O.E. 5.5. Well, the same exact thing happens with I.E. 6/O.E. 6. Then my daughter, who also uses the machine, asks how long I've been working this problem. I say 4-5 days, and WHY? It seems she has been using M.S.N. I.M. for chat and Hotmail for quite a while and about 4-5 days ago it asked to be upgraded, so she did. The problem turns out to be that with the NEW version of M.S.N. I.M. (6.0) on the machine, it HAS TO BE LAUNCHED FIRST, then O.E. works perfectly (I.E. too). If it's not loaded, O.E. locks up, and I.E gets screwy. This post, then, has two purposes: 1. Informational. From my perspective, unless you don't mind having to run M.S.N. I.M. all the time, don't download the new version, assuming you use I.E. & O.E. (Outlook (2000, SP 3) didn't seem to be affected), 'cause they won't work without it. And, 2. Has anyone heard about this 'problem', and what do you think about ripping out M.S.N. I.M.? I would think it would be OK, since everybody in the world doesn't have M.S.N. I.M. on their machines, and O.E. works OK. Thanks for any input. Tom.
Win 98 SE, I.E. 5.5, & O.E. 5.5. Ordinarily a very trouble-free, stable machine. A few days ago, O.E. stopped working, i.e. it gets to the splash screen and halts (locked up) and I.E. gets wacky, i.e. it will go to some sites and not others, takes a looong time to get to sites, that kind of thing. It takes 2 attempts with the 'Close Program' dialog to shut O.E. down, then the computer locks up on shutdown (blue screen of death). Tried everything. Dr. Watson showed no errors (?), used S.F.C. to check/replace several system files. No change. Decided to try download/upgrade to I.E. 6/O.E. 6, assuming (know what happens when you assume?) a corrupt file in O.E. 5.5. Well, the same exact thing happens with I.E. 6/O.E. 6. Then my daughter, who also uses the machine, asks how long I've been working this problem. I say 4-5 days, and WHY? It seems she has been using M.S.N. I.M. for chat and Hotmail for quite a while and about 4-5 days ago it asked to be upgraded, so she did. The problem turns out to be that with the NEW version of M.S.N. I.M. (6.0) on the machine, it HAS TO BE LAUNCHED FIRST, then O.E. works perfectly (I.E. too). If it's not loaded, O.E. locks up, and I.E gets screwy. This post, then, has two purposes: 1. Informational. From my perspective, unless you don't mind having to run M.S.N. I.M. all the time, don't download the new version, assuming you use I.E. & O.E. (Outlook (2000, SP 3) didn't seem to be affected), 'cause they won't work without it. And, 2. Has anyone heard about this 'problem', and what do you think about ripping out M.S.N. I.M.? I would think it would be OK, since everybody in the world doesn't have M.S.N. I.M. on their machines, and O.E. works OK. Thanks for any input. Tom.