Win ME Updates and Safe Mode

I'm trying to help a lady help herself. She has ME and has never been on line until recently. She knows nothing about updating so I stop by her place each morning lately and select about a dozen updates and start the download. She is on a very slow dialup (way out in the country) and all this is slow. After a couple of days everything but the Internet Explorer 6 in the SP1 section downloaded and installed.

I found the Installer for IE 6 in the Windows Folder but am having trouble with it. When double clicking the icon, a window appears and asks for "continue installation" or "start over installing" or something similiar. All goes well for a few minutes, watching the status bar and when it get to about 8 or 9% a window appears: "A previous installation has pending work requiring a re-boot." This same window will appear with either option, to continue or start over. What do I do? This was been a cycle for two days now.

I don't know if things will install in Safe Mode or not so I decided to try that. This %@#&%XX# Dell will not start in a Safe Mode. F8 won't get it, F12 won't get there either. I googled it and on a Forum a person said that holding the CTRL while booting will cause it to bring up a Window offering three options, one being Safe Mode. Not on this machine it won't!

I'm thinking, delete all the information in the folder in the Windows Folder and start over. Sure hate to as the best I've seen on her download is 14,400KB and it takes so long.

 

For future reference to get into Safe Mode. Go to Start\Run and type in Msconfig and press Enter. When it opens, click on the Advanced button. Then put a checkmark next to Enable Startup Menu. You should now get the menu when you reboot.
Here is a suggestion about IE6, you could stop by at a computer store, or a grocery store and pick up one of those CD's for a internet service such as PConline. They have the IE6 installation files on them.
Click here on how to get rid of the 'previous installation' message.

 

Thank you Sir. The link will do just fine. As for the suggestion on the disk, that would be a long drive. The nearest PC store to me is 44 miles. The Grocery Stores around here are the Mom and Pop type.

I'm sure I can handle it now that I know the cure.

Again thanks.

 

Hi Mudd,
In case you weren't aware of it, there seem to be quite a number of us WinME users who have had no end of trouble with the IE6 critical update (and like your friend, I have a Dell). I actually had to reinstall my OS a few times as a result of failed installations of that particular update, so if your friend's computer is still up and running properly, consider yourself fortunate!
Never having succeeded at installing the IE6 update myself (four years later!), what I did was simply to download Firefox and use that as my browser instead. If your friend doesn't have much experience with the internet, it's not as if she would even have to un-learn an old brower and learn a new one...
Incidentally, I, too, used to have a heck of a time trying to get into Safe Mode on my WinME computer. Then, last year, I came across the same advice that markp62 gave you above, and I followed the instructions. I've left the settings that way on my computer ever since, so that I automatically have the option of going into Safe Mode every time I turn on the computer. I don't know, it may take a couple of extra seconds to load Windows each time that way, but it's certainly worth it to me to know that accessing Safe Mode is a no-brainer for me now!

 

Mark62
The solution from the URL, Microsoft, didn't work either. It did just the same as before the turn off in msconfig. I delete the download from her file, got on the internet and downloaded another setup for IE6 but then the download was going to take hours, maybe days on her 14,400KB Modem speed so I forgot that.

Correct me please if I'm wrong. Isn't the IE6 program a part of SP1 for ME that was put out a couple of years ago? If so, what would be wrong for me to download the SP1 for ME, put it on a disk and run it in the ME computer.This might install IE6.

If the above is right, would you suggest I again turn off things in the configuration before running the SP1 disk?

Lot of dumb questions I suppose but I don't know what to do to help this old lady. I want her PC to be up to date as possibly can be. S

 

Hi Mudd,

If something goes wrong with the disc you create, or doesn't work, you can order a IE6.0 sp1 cd from MS http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ordercd/ie6sp1.mspx

What this ordered cd has that you may not is the msi installer package.

When I was running ME, I installed IE6 from the MS cd.

Regards - Charles

 

Thank you Sir for that information. Hope my disk is successful.