I blogged late last month about how I had downloaded the second beta of Internet Explorer 7 and not only did it not connect to the Net but it prevented Explorer from working once I'd removed IE7.
Well, the problem is worse than that. I followed Microsoft's advice in trying to kill Explorer (delete the Windows update – there wasn't one; run this delete command – didn't work) which was hopeless. So I just deleted it through the Control Panel.
Of course Explorer remains thanks to Microsoft hard-wiring it into Windows. But the bastard won't connect to the Net. With IE7, Microsoft has tinkered with the communications settings in Windows.
I was fine with this because I don't use Explorer anymore. But then there are a number of other Windows components and – crucially – other software programs that use Explorer's browser engine to connect to the Net.
So I can connect to the Net within Outlook – so no pics etc – and I can't get several pieces of software that I regularly use working either. This is really annoying me, as you might expect.
So I went to System Restore to roll back my computer to pre-IE7 Beta, and guess what – I'd disabled the bloody feature ages ago because it eats up loads of space and processing unnecessarily.
So my question – no, plea – is can someone please, preferably Microsoft, explain what the hell IE7 does to Windows communications and how do I get it back to how it was and get my bloody computer back?
