My aunt has an OS problem. Her com is using, bless her soul, Windows Millenium. :(

Whats happens is that whenever the OS startups, Explorer will cause an error in the wininet.dll file. This leads to Explorer to crash and make the OS unusable. I went into Safe Mode but I could not replace the file because it was in use. I tried booting into MS-DOS mode with the intention of overwriting the file via floppy, but amazingly, there was no option from F8 menu to boot into MS-DOS mode.

Any tips? Short of an OS rehaul?

<font color=skyblue>Is there anyway to uninstall Explorer and reinstall it? I have done that before, but I still had net access, meaning my Explorer problem did not prohibit my access to the net.</font>

I think you don't have to hit any key to go into dos. Just reboot with the disk in it. If this is not the case you can go into the BIOS and set it to check for boot disks and CDs before using the hard disk to open windows (if you're confident with BIOS, I don't have the exact name and settings at hand now though)

So for me it checks after the IRQ table is shown

Larry, the internet is unreachable in normal mode, and kaput in safe mode.

philip, I will try the bootdisk tomorrow and see how it goes( it's 1am over here already, doubt my aunt will be awake ;) [img]tongue.gif[/img] ).

How many times have I said it - avoid windows ME like the plague-ridden filth it is.

More practicaly, boot from the CD and do a dirty install, which should replace the bad .dll

Hey, it's not my com. ;P I'm still using Win98 myself. Will upgrade to XP when I can.

(off topic) why is it so bad? I have used it over 3 years now and had only one real big problem with IRQs, but I don't know if the way IRQ are assigned changed with newer editions

It's been a while since I tried ME on one of my systems... I went back. Too many crashes.

But what you should have (I think) is an option to go to the command prompt when you boot. That puts you in DOS mode.

Alternately, you might create a startup disk and boot from that. Then you're on its copy of Windows, and not the one on the hard drive. You should be able to fix anything then.

Andrewas' suggestion to do an OS reinstall is also a good one. I'm going to be doing that soon on one of my machines.

<span style="color: lightblue">When you go to shutdown, there should be four options, in a drop-down list: Shutdown, Restart, Standby, Restart in MS-DOS Mode. Yes, "Restart in MS-DOS mode" will restart in MS-DOS mode. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Just reinstall the OS over the old one and the error should be gone no problem.