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Suthnautr

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How can IE be restored to it's original installation (both files and settings)?

A client of mine has XP Pro, SP2 - with IE6.  The system was badly infested with adware, malware and spyware last year and Internet Explorer couldn't get onto the internet.  I cleaned it up using Ad-Aware, Pest-Patrol and Hijack This.  I then installed Firefox and internet access was restored - and no more spyware is on the machine.

The problem is that the network is not browseable and nobody can connect now to the computer from any of the other machines.  The main account had become corrupted by the former technician who visited some heavy porn sites using IE.  Now I need to get the network back in working order because after doing half a days additional work on the machine today, the boss wants to have the printer on the computer shared and accessible to the rest of the office.  There is NO firewall, the share has been created and unfortunately even mapping the share does not work.  IE cannot get to a web site - either through DNS or by putting in the web site's IP.  Since the two problems (inability to browse the local computers on the LAN and IE no longer working) occurred simultaneously, I am certain that restoring IE functionality will correct the LAN problem as well.

Does anyone know how to restore IE and all files and registry settings to it's originally installed completely pristine default native setup?
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war1
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Suthnautr,

Fastest way to get system back to default condition is do a clean install of the operating system.  You have too many problems to fix.  Besides, you do not know if you got all the virus and mailware?  There could be rootkits that you do not know about.  Clean install will get rid of them.
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Suthnautr

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Sometimes it is necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.  Klausiwitz
Thanks for your advice War1.   Has anyone ever tried the solution offered at Microsoft's site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318378/EN-US/ which says that re-applying SP2 will work (or alternately with SP1 doing a reg edit and reinstalling IE6)?   Does anyone have any comment on how well this works?
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war1
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Have you tried this?

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

OR

http://www.petri.co.il/reinstall_ie_6_on_xp.htm

That seems to fix most of the problems...

Cheers,
Rajesh


Suthnautr, any update?
Although re-applying the service pack did indeed solve some of the problem - the upgrade to IE7 caused it to come back, and internet was lost permanently at that point - to make it more fruitless - FireFox (which had been working) also wanted to do an upgrade - which I let it - and it too lost access to the internet after that.  The best solution (since the PC cannot be blown out and re-installed because much of the mission critical sofware is irreplacable) therfore was indeed to re apply SP2.  Thanks WAR1
Suthnautr,

Glad to help.  If you still having problem, uninstall IE7 to revert back to IE6. Somehow IE7 is not working with your computer.