So, my brother in law is having some trouble with his parent's XP system. Here's the story he phoned me up with:
After clearing out some junk from add/remove programs, he realizes that he somehow deleted the ActiveX plugin. He insists that he didn't do it on purpose and he has no idea how he did. Now the computer can't do updates (due to ActiveX's tie-ins with Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer's necessity to Software update), and won't sign in to anything (MSN, Facebook, etc.). He says he could probably just re-install Windows (his parents, being older, don't care or understand much about computers so are indifferent to this). I suggested System Restore, and he says he's going to try that. If that fails, he says he's going to reinstall Windows.
My question is: If the former fails, is the latter a better idea either way? Can you simply download the ActiveX plugin? By the way, the computer's XP is Home Edition. Sorry for the long post, thanks for the help.
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"See? Gay marriage, a single-payer health-care system, and moves toward decriminalizing pot won't cause the country to implode. They're doing all of that and more up in Canada, for Christ's sake, and the sky hasn't fallen."
Oh, I've just about got him converted, but his parents are another story..that's his responsibility. Still, though, what do I do?
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"See? Gay marriage, a single-payer health-care system, and moves toward decriminalizing pot won't cause the country to implode. They're doing all of that and more up in Canada, for Christ's sake, and the sky hasn't fallen."
1. Just go ahead and reinstall Windows if they don't have anything on the machine that needs to be backed up. It's just more straightforward than messing around with individual components.
He doesn't have Firefox, but he does have Chrome. (IE wouldn't work without ActiveX anyways.) If only they WERE Mac users, this never would have happened..
And that's what I thought. Thanks for the second opinion.
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"See? Gay marriage, a single-payer health-care system, and moves toward decriminalizing pot won't cause the country to implode. They're doing all of that and more up in Canada, for Christ's sake, and the sky hasn't fallen."
Firefox is always one free download away. Safari is also one free download away, and works VERY well on Windows (which surprised me, as it's such a Mac-centric product or so I thought). He might want to give Safari a spin.
Personally I am a supporter of Firefox; I've used and loved it for as long as I can remember. This isn't his computer, though; but I have insisted time and time again that FireFox is the best (nobody in my immediate family uses anything else at my insistence ). On his own computer I know he uses Chrome (probably why he installed it on his parents') because his computer is heinously slow and he insists that this is the fastest browser of all (he is one of of my PC using friends who use it and insist that when it comes out for Mac, I must try it).
I won't argue with him because seriously..his computer is junk. Every time he uses it he has to take the back cover off and jiggle wires around to get it to boot up. Eurgh. Dangerous. I figure it's life expectancy is so friggin' short anyways he can use whatever the hell he wants with it, it's not going to last much longer anyways.
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Quote:
"See? Gay marriage, a single-payer health-care system, and moves toward decriminalizing pot won't cause the country to implode. They're doing all of that and more up in Canada, for Christ's sake, and the sky hasn't fallen."
As you mentioned, Windows XP has a wonderful function called "System Restore" that restores XP to a previous state. It's really handy when you've been mucking about in the system and threw away things or installed things that you regret.
I'm not quite as critical of Windows after needing System Restore to save my bacon a couple of times. Since I need my XP installation for all my gaming, it's important to have it running smoothly.
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Thanks for the response, gwillikers. That was the first conclusion I jumped to. As far as I know, that went smoothly, because he hasn't phoned me back to report any further errors.
__________________
Quote:
"See? Gay marriage, a single-payer health-care system, and moves toward decriminalizing pot won't cause the country to implode. They're doing all of that and more up in Canada, for Christ's sake, and the sky hasn't fallen."
Still, though, what do I do?
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