Windows Update, now Explorer freezes up

spartan92

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May 11, 2004
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Question for anyone with extensive knowledge of Microsoft or Explorer/Windows issues:

I am currently running Windows ME on an older machine that I'm getting ready to retire. However, after one of the Windows updates that automatically downloaded last week and I installed, Internet Explorer locks up.

If I turn my computer on for the first time of the day, doing nothing else prior, when I double click on the Explorer icon, I get the infamous hourglass and a pale white screen. The cursor/hourglass is frozen. For some reason it will work ok if I hit the reset button on the computer, restarting it again. However after a complete shutdown, the process repeats again.

Has anyone else run into this?
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Sounds like typical MS screwups, try upgrading IE.

Of course my 98SE systems work better BEFORE upgrading IE, so if you already have the latest version and it's still causing problems, you could try reverting to the original.

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spartan92

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I'm running IE version 6.0.2800.1106

I think this is the most up to date version. The weird thing about my situation is that it only has this problem when using the computer after a complete system shutdown. If I do a restart, it works fine. What would be the difference in how the software/system is affected in a shutdown vs. a restart?
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
There are differences between a clean boot and a reboot, but I'm not the one to list what changes.

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<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 

vagabond

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Most of the time it's a compromised MBR. If scanreg/fix in DOS doesn't work the problem out. I had a customer with 98SE and after she managed to crash it over ten times inside of half a year I decided to install XP on her system. Funny, on her system with 98SE she was always missing some .dll or .exe file in the boot sector. Never found out how she managed to do it.

I've still got my fingers crossed. It's only been about two weeks.

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