I decided to upgrade to the final Internet Explorer 7 last night only to find that I had to spend the next 2 hours trying to fix a bad install. Thank God for Firefox! When I rebooted after the install, I got the following error:
Unfortunately I couldn't re-install, I couldn't uninstall, I couldn't run any Windows-based programs at all. The only thing that would work was the three-finger salute (Ctrl+Alt+Del). From there I was able to run Firefox, and searched for a solution to fix the problem. Every solution said to either re-install, uninstall, etc, but I got the same error every time, the computer couldn't find normaliz.dll. One site suggested downloading the file, but it returned a 404 error page. Another suggestion was to copy normaliz.dll and newdev.dll into the system32 folder, but Windows Explorer wouldn't work either.
I decided on a different approach. I'm running IE7 on a laptop, and was able to copy those two files over to a folder on the other computer. Using another program, Xplorer2, I was able to copy these two files into the system32 folder, and after I rebooted, everything was fine. From there I was able to reinstall the program again, following all the instructions, which I'd failed to do the first time around.
Of course, if my copy of XP was genuine, I wouldn't have all these problems! I've mentioned a handy little program before for non-genuine Windows versions, called muBlinder, which allows you to update without activation.
I have less than a year now to give up smoking, I promised the kids I'd give up before I turn 50. The count-down has begun.