Cannot run I.E.

I have a P4 machine with Windows 2000 Pro. Here we are, Wednesday evening, and I can no longer run Windows Update (from the Start menu). Then I realize I cannot even run I.E.! I know it was IE6 because I had been completing regular updates until about a week ago. I click on either shortcut and nothing happens. No error message, nothing. BTW, The shortcut looks OK and the EXE file looks ok. What happened??? TIA, Greg.

 

have you checked for worms, trojans, virus , and spyware?
There are several of each which disable windows update and can interfere with IE.

What does task manager show if you try to launch IE? Does it launch just not show ?

 

Steve: Yes, of course I rebooted. No help. Oshwyn, I do keep my Norton AV up to date, so I scanned the whole hard drive tonight. Nothing found. When looking in Task Manager, nothing shows which would represent IE. By the way, I normally use FIREFOX and it works fine. But I still need IE for some sites, like Windows Update. And it looks like Microsoft just issued about 10 patches today for Win2000, but I cannot get them!

 

Greg - try checking your event logs for more details.

 

Newt-- thanks for the idea. I will look at it tonight, if I can get my son away from his machine for a bit... Will keep you posted here... GG

 

Here's the latest: On a hunch, I logged in as the Admin and so, IE works. Windows Update works too, so I installed about 20 patches. Then logged back into my son's account, without administrative rights, and IE is dead again, as is Windows Update. Still no message; just dead. Do I need to give my son Admin rights? On the other hand, is it really necessary to protect the machine by DENYING him admin rights? My son is 12. Seems a stupid solution, but that will be the choice.

 

Hi, I had the same problem and Charles and Oswyn5 helped me out. My problem was in the Google toolbar helper in the add-ons.

 

A bit more news on this: I found that I DID give my son admin rights some time ago. So that is not the problem. It's just something about his user account that will not let IE run. At least I can do Windows updates from the main Admin account. And my son cannot log onto that account, so hopefully he won't damage it!

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305506