This procedure is not perfect. You'll see a variety of error messages and a new one to me is that "The file Show Desktop.scf on (Unknown) is needed."
What I find is if I push on through and all things work, then I call it a success. I don't fix things that work. I hope you understand.
While there are some that would want a better method, I think the total OS reinstall, while the "correct answer" is asking far too much. So I have this method that I can share for those who need it. I usually note that it's not perfect and now you know why.
Thanks again and my reply is simply don't fix it if it works.
Bob
'You're the tops!'
Last Thursday, I tried to send you a message of thanks in reply to yours of 19 Nov but, for some odd reason, the system wouldn't accept it (when I clicked 'Preview Message', nothing happened). I've tried again this morning - with the same result. So I started a new thread.
Following your suggestion of 19 Nov, last Wednesday I downloaded IE5.5 SP2 from
http://browsers.evolt.org and IEradicator from
www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html.
Then ran ieradicator, and uninstalled OE5 (per MS KB art. 256219, 'How to Manually Uninstall Outlook Express 5.x...'). Then installed IE5.5 SP2,
restored OE messages, address book, mail settings,etc (backed up earlier).
It all went swimmingly. I only had two moments of anxiety: first, during the OE5 uninstall, towards the end of the 'delete registry sub-keys' routine, MS
KB art. 256219 says: 'Find and rename the following files:
Msoeacct.dll, Msoert2.dll, Msoe.dll, Msoeres.dll, Oeimport.dll, Csapi3t1.dll, Directdb.dll, Wab32.dll and Wab32res.dll'
Unfortunately, it doesn't say what the new names should be!! So I just had to ignore it. So far, it doesn't seem to have made any difference as things
seem to be working OK. Do you have any thoughts on the matter? Is the renaming of these files important? If so, what are their new names?
Then, during the final re-boot, I got the error message: 'The file Show Desktop.scf on (Unknown) is needed. Type the path where the file is located,
then click OK'
This is meaningless to me. I note that 'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM' is already in the
window, so click 'OK'. No joy.
Thinking that maybe this missing file is on my Win98SE CD, I insert it and type 'F:\' (my CD-ROM drive). Still no joy.
So click 'Skip' and press on. It doesn't seem to make any difference as, so far, everything seems to be working OK.
Do you have any ideas on this one?
Anyway, final upshot is that my problem is solved, and that I now have OE5 as my default email handler, and I can use Word 2000 as my email editor.
Thanks again, Bob.
Best
old codger

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