IE5 to 5.5

[thewolfe]

IE5 to 5.5
First let me preface this post by saying that I'm not talking about my computer and the person I'm trying to help does not want to upgrade their operating system.

I'm working on a Dell dimension about five years old that came installed with Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 5.

He's having a little problem that I think may be with Internet Explorer.

The problem is that on a couple of sites the computer temporarily freezes for about 30 seconds and then is fine. This does not happen on all sites.

One example is on Yahoo they have a search window and when he tries to search it hesitates for about 30 seconds and then goes to the search engine page.

My question is: can I downloaded Internet Explorer 5.5 service pack and install it on top of his Internet Explorer 5?

Or do I have to have Internet Explorer 5.5 before installing the 5.5 service pack?

[pentachris]

You must have have Internet Explorer 5.5 before installing the 5.5 service pack.

Is this on a broadband connection? If not, it may well be deteriorating dial-up service for one of many possible reasons.

When strange things happen while browsing, a spyware scan is usually a good place to start.

If it were me helping my friend, I wouldn't update to 5.5, but rather to 6.

[thewolfe]

First I heard from numerous sources that IE6 is great w/ XP but doesn't work well w/ Win98.

What kind of spyware.

He has Spybot but I think it only runs manually.

[david eaton]

IE 6 SP1 works with Win 98 SE, and win 98 Gold. Not certain about the original edition, but it should be OK.

Run Spybot, but remember to update it first. If the problem persists, it would be a good idea to download Hijack this from here (http://www.merijn.org/files/hijackthis.zip). Unzip it into it's own folder, and run it.save the resulting log, and paste it here for checking if you are uncertain about anything.

Don't do what one poster on another forum did, and fix everything in it!!

[thewolfe]

I went for the IE6 and it installed fine and cleared up the freeze ups.

Thanks to all for your posts.

[mjc]

IE 6, when first released was a nightmare on 9x, but there was an updated release not to long into its lifespan that cleared most of the problems. With IE6 SP1 all problems with the update seem to be cured. In fact IE6SP1 is the recommended upgrade path, because it includes the most security patches/fixes.