Originally posted by Quadriflax@May 08 2002,20:35
First, reinstall Windows? That sucks. Second, why would I install the program only to uninstall it? Am I missing something?
I dunno if I fully trust 98lite to uninstall it w/o messing something up. But what if I were to reinstall IE5.5 over my non-working install? Would that put it back in the list of installed programs so I could uninstall it from there, or would it just mess things up worse? If nothing else I'd really like to remove the icon from my desktop. If anyone knows how to do that I would love to know how. Keep in mind I tried TweakUI, but that already says it shouldn't be there (IE is unchecked). Thanks.
Hmm, I was trying to figure it out, and I honestly can't fathom why on earth that'd work. That seems... no it is very counterintuitive/productive.
You can reinstall it, and it should show up in add/remove again. However, it may or may not overwrite older files. It may rename them, change their registry settings, etc. Remember, it's not only a browser, it's a huge portion of the OS, so there's really no limit as what may happen. But, hopefully, what should happen is that it'll overwrite previous files, and will remove them when you uninstall. Remember to restart after installing (should be done w/ every program, but that's another story).
Trust 98lite, really. The program is rock solid. I haven't met anybody who has had problems with the program. The demo version is all you need. If you really have concerns, you may want to find yourself a copy of Norton Ghost. No one should be without it.
So I looked into that link problem, and I thought 'hey! why not just go into dos and delete it from there?' Well, the DOS box (within windows) won't show me. Figures. Can't you just click it once, and hit the delete button (the physical [del] key that no one seems to use anymore)? It should say something like 'this stupid piece of *&%$ can't be stored in the recycle bin, please keep it because it needs your love, it's so lonely' or something more general - in any event, hit yes. That always worked for me...
If that doesn't work, I haven't tried this yet, but I assume it *may* work... restart the computer and go into safe dos mode. Enter the c:\windows\desktop directory (may be different based on your setup) and do a dir search. If it's not there, try dir/a:h. If you see something like explorer.lnk or something like that, that should probably be it. Set your path to c:\windows\command, and then type
attrib -r -h -s (name of file)
That'll make it deletable.
del (name of file) and that should be the end of that.
However, you should note that this kind of stuff DOES respawn. One of the more lovely features of 98 is that it sometimes reverts to web mode after you turn it off - it's almost a ritual for me to turn it off after 3 changes in my desktop settings after reformatting (or was, thanks to Ghost).
Hopefully that works. One of the more annoying things I've learned about Windows98 is the way it operates varies from computer to computer - desktop and laptop alike. What works on one computer may or may not work on another, and stuff like deleting icons I *think* isn't a hardware/proprietary issue.
Thinking about it - One of the reasons why TweakUI is not picking it up is that link name may have changed between versions of IE. I know it's been listed in different names, from ie.* to explorer.* to iexplorer.* to god knows what.