4th June 2002

When upgrades get you down, Lockergnomie John Clinton's tip might do the trick: "I am running Windows 98 SE and IE 5.5. The last time I installed a newer Visual Basic engine, the update changed the oleaut32.dll to a version that was compatible with XP, not 98 SE (and I didn't realize this). The problem: IE developed a bug that wouldn't allow new windows to open from links on many Web pages. In some cases, whole sites were inaccessible (except for the home page). It took months to find the source of the problem, after many re-installs of the OS and various versions of IE. Newsgroup folks tried to be helpful, but after the 5th 'tip' doesn't work, they become silent. The solution came from the MSKB, ultimately - but it wasn't easy to find. This is just a precautionary tale for those people who may update VB." Another thing you might consider doing is searching for common libraries on your hard drive and make sure you only keep one installed (in your System folder). I did a drive scan for COMCTL32.OCX the other day and found 13 of them (some different, some replicates) in different locations. Watch out!