Internet Explorer - Can't Type in Seach Bar

Anyone ever had this happen: I can't type in the search bar in my internet explorer (IE) or the text area of Outlook Express. I can click on links just can't type in the search bar. I can type fine in other programs. I would just reinstall IE but you can't uninstall / reinstall IE because I guess it is part of Windows XP which I do not want to have to reinstall.
I saw this out at the microsoft site but this does not appear to apply to WIN XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q235236

I really do not want to have to reformat and reinstall xp.

Anyone have any any clues or ideas on how to fix this? Thanks.

 

I'd say it's a good time to run SFC /scannow and see if it can fix things.

If not, there is a way to fool XP into thinking IE isn't installed and it will allow you to run a new install of it. That would likely take care of the problem.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/repair_reinstall_ie_and_oe_6.htm

also see:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q318378

 

Has anyone ever had this or heard of this happening before?

 

Tarponmandan--I have had the problem with OE. A reboot fixed things.

 

I've rebooted at least 300 times - I've had this problem for about 9 months now. Is reimageing your computer hard to do?

 

Can't type in IE

This happened to me yesterday. I can't type anything in IE. I can type in all my other programs, so it's not the mouse or keyboard. Everything worked fine when I left work on Wednesday, but when I returned yesterday morning, my Incredimail crashed each time I opened it. I went to the Incredimail site to troubleshoot and discovered I couldn't type anything. I tried to do a system restore and all of my restore point had disappeared. My Norton Systemsworks also crashed. The only thing I did on Wednesday was install an updated Windows Media Player. I downloaded Panda virus checker and it found spyware that was eliminated, but still unable to type in IE.

 

Did you try the fix in the Microsoft article? XP has that file too and it's possible it could be the problem. If you haven't tried it, give it a try. It can't hurt.

How about surferdude2's suggestion? Did you try it? If the file mentioned in the article is corrupt or missing it would probably replace it.

How long has this been a problem? If it hasn't been too long, try system restore.

 

While researching another problem I did run across articles where there was a bug if using either "windowblinds" or "xpstyles" (I forget which) and certain popup-stoppers. This software conflict produced symptoms exactly as you described. Do you use either of these products? If not perhaps the same theory applies. Software conflict or two applications that are not getting along. Just thought I'd mention this as I ran across your post while looking for another in the back pages. I know this would be a rare problem and would apply to possibly only a few, but who would of thunk it?

It's been a while, how ya' doing on this? Did you find a fix?

 

Can't type in IE

I didn't use either, unless they came attached to the WMP update. I finally had to reinstall XP, which would not install because the version on the computer was newer than the one I was trying to install. Searched the web to find a fix for that, integrated XP with sp2 and everything works fine now. Restore points came back and did not lose any data.