explorer / IE / control panel will not open

When I click My computer / or start...run...explorer: the screen blinks and the only result is my active desktop is disabled (I do not get explorer or the ability to browse my hard drives).

If I try to run IE, or control panel nothing at all happens. I re-installed IE 5.5 then I went to IE 6. I also installed win2k sp2 and the IIS 5 rollout.

I watched the process as I tried to run IE, IE would start up and load about 1600k into memory and then stop.

Also, I tried simply clicking an internet explorer page shortcut from my desktop, I get an error "Unable to open this INternet Shortcut. The protocal "javascript" does not have a registered program.

If anyone has any ideas, I am in the process of backing up all my data (the 80G drive is formatting on a shared server, probably be another 2 hours before I am backed up). After that, I reformat my own hard drive and start from scratch.

 

If you haven't already blown your OS away and started over, you might try

1. remove all temporary internet files
2. remove all cookies
3. run a repair of your IE install

If it still won't behave,

4. reinstall Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (VM)

which should re-register the app.

 

thanks

thanks for the reply -- that makes sense. I already nuked the OS. On the upside, I have a clean slate to discover new mp3s and I increased my OS system partition size.