During a routine defragmentation (Diskeeper Pro) the defragmentation aborted with an error message stating "fatal error" then showed the path of c:\Documents and SettingsusernameApplication DataMicrosoftInternet Explorer and referred to one file, desktop.htt The error message stated that the IE files were corrupt. I ran a disk check as was suggested. No change occured after the procedure. I then tried the system restore and again there was no change. I even tried the restore function from both Regestry Mechanic and Spybot Search and Destroy. Neither of these restores worked as after the computer rebooted both resulted in "cannot restore to these restore points". The strange thing is that the IE application still seems to work even though there is no longer an Internet Explorer folder in the "Documents and SettingsusernameApplication DataMicrosoft" folder. The only thing that seems to be effected is the Quick Launch function of the taskbar. I noticed that the few icons I had put there (including the Show Desktop icon) had vanished. When clicking on an empty space in the taskbar to try to activate the Quick Launch an error message comes up stating that this can not be done. I know that the IE application is unfortunately a part of the operating system so I am wondering if it is possible to re-installl just IE. When I tried to download and install IE 6 from the Microsoft Website I was informed that there was already "a newer version" installed therefore the installation would not be able to continue. I did notice as I tried to think if there were any previous indications as to an impending problem, all I ever saw was a box come up every so often and from what I remember on just one web site that I view " Script error: Do you wish to continue running the script? I click yes and everything seemed to be fine. I know a lot of script errors can occur on some websites. I use Netscape as my browser so really I am just concerned now about what further problems may develope besides the loss of the Quick Launch due to a corrupt IE files. Thanks in advance for any suggestions and I hope everyone has a great holiday.