Flashman

Permissions were fine... my wife is an admin on her machine. Figured it out. Kerio Personal Firewall 4 not only monitors network connections, it also monitors and allows you to make rules for applications. It is actually very useful... it has stopped many a piece of spyware from being installed. Naturally IE long ago was run, KPF4 asked if we wanted to let it run, and we said to allow it and make that a rule. Either when all this spyware was installed or when the spyware removers were run, the KPF4 setting was changed to "Deny". Changing that fixed everything. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions!

I can only speak for the notebooks my company makes, but we are one of the biggest manufacturers in the world (if not the biggest); and our version of XP on our older machines does not require activation. The disks provided with our computers contained an image, and XP was already activated. However, our current models all come with the first disk being an OEM copy of XP that installs the same as a retail copy; and then several additional disks that install all the drivers and added software unattended. You still must activate XP with 30 days, the same as a retail copy. And such, you can make a couple of changes without having to re-activate; just like a retail version. However, unless you have one of the rare units where this new hard drive is going into a bay as a second drive instead of replacing the current drive; if you replace the drive then you are going to have to reinstall XP. So once you reinstall it, will you have to activate it? The answer to that basically is, did you have to activate XP originally? If you did, don't worry, you are allowed to re-activate and/or re-install XP on the same machine; it will probably all be automatic over the internet without the need to speak to Microsoft. The activation is there simply so they can spot one serial number being used over and over, and then invalidate that serial number. Re-using it every once and a while due to re-installs and/or upgrades is normal and won't cause any issues.

Thanks for the suggestion, soldier1st, but I've already tried that. Interesting tool, unosys. I had basically done everything it does except for re-registring the modules; but I still ran it saying yes to all options. Still no fix. Does anyone have any other suggestions before I'm forced to stay up all night updating my unattended CD?

Need some suggestions as to what might fix IE on my wife's computer. She was installing something that apparently didn't come with spyware... but of course it did. When KPF 4 set off alarms that new things were trying to connect to the web, she shut the installation down. She then ran Adaware and Spybot, and removed a bunch of new junk (she had by chance just run them both a few hours before). After rebooting, she cannot open IE. Attempting to open it will give you the message "Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have appropriate permissions to access the item." This occurs even if you try running it from Start->Run or by clicking directly on iexplore.exe in Windows Explorer. Everying else seems fine, and Netscape works. Research shows the only way to get the latest version of IE is through SP2. I have SP2 on CD, and so I reinstalled it; but no fix. I then ran SFC, and it did find a number of files to replace, but did not fix the issue. I next tried a in place reinstall (repair) of Windows, and so used a version into which I have slipstreamed SP2. Still no fix. Though I didn't think it would make a difference after all of this, I did reinstall IE off of my WinXP w/SP2 disk by using the command "rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %windir%\Inf\ie.inf" I have run Hijackthis, and found nothing of concern (I use it often to fix other's computers, and generally know what is good and bad). Can anyone offer any advice? Thanks, Flashman