NirCmd, WinINet, and RAS

[HoppaLong]

XP Pro_SP3

There is cell and broadband service in my small, rural town.  I've lived here for 10 years.  About once or twice
each month broadband drops out for several hours.  A very inexpensive dial-up ISP is a good backup.

IE 6.0 is installed with SP3.  I've always used Mozilla browsers, so I never had any reason to update IE.  I was
beginning to have a few page rendering problems, so I decided to try other lightweight browsers.  A couple
recommended IE 7.0 or better, so I installed IE 8.0.

(I edited out all personal info from the attached images.)

You can create your own WinINet and RAS scripts, but NirCmd does the job with a simple shortcut.  Before
installing IE 8.0, NirCmd "inetdial" used the wininet.dll and launched the active dialog box you see in the
image.  I really like this dialog box.  After dialing a number it displays the connection info you want to see.

NirCmd "rasdialdlg" opens dial-up properties if you need to change the settings.

After installing IE 8.0 (and a newer version of wininet.dll) NirCmd "inetdial" opens dial-up properties, not the
active dialog box that connects you to the web!

There are other ways of connecting like creating a shortcut to the RAS phonebook file or rasphone.pbk.  There
are also many applets that will do the job.  I don't like any of these alternatives.

If possble, I want to restore that active WinINet dialog box.  I don't know why NirCmd "inetdial" stopped working
after installing IE 8.0.