Vista - Java problem

I noticed that Java applets were not displaying when I visited a website. I checked the test on the Java website and that didn't work. Java said that my version was out of date. It said I had version 6 update 15 and should update to 16. I did that and tried the test again -still didn't work.
I looked in my installed programs list and saw that as well as update 16 I had SE Runtime Environment 6 installed.
I uninstalled update 16, revisited Java which said I had 1.0.6 installed and the test worked. Hooray! I installed update 16 again and it worked! Double hooray!
I went to bed happy. Next day applets wren't working again. Visited Java, test wasn't working.
Tried uninstalling both Javas and deleting the Java directory and installed update 16. Now any site with Java causes IE8 to display ''Internet Explorer has stopped trying to restore this website", Firefox just closes.
I did a system restore to before I uninstalled both Javas in the hope that at least the browser wouldn't crash on encountering Java, but no luck.
Thank you if you have read all of this, I would be grateful for any suggestions

Uninstall Java in Control panel->Programs and features, remove Java folder in C:\ Program Files.
You can download this next generation Java from here:
https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP...-CDS_Developer
Though it's a beta version,it works fine for me. Hope it'll do the same for you as well.

Thanks for the reply.
Forgot to mention that at the second attempt at uninstalling Java, I got a message when trying to uninstall Runtime Environment 6 version that source could not be found and I was unable to complete the uninstall .
Will try again when I get home tonight.

I uninstalled the latest version and used Javara to remove the older version. Installed the latest (I used the offline update 16 rather than the beta), checked the Java tester and it worked!
I rebooted and checked again and as before Java had stopped working! I tried uninstalling and reinstalling a couple more times with no success. As a last resort I looked in the Java control panel and tried deselecting 'Enable the next-generation Java plug-in' and what would you know? Java now works, even after a reboot! I don't know why I can't use this plug-in, but I'm pleased I've sorted it (sort of!).

I'm glad to hear that you got it fixed, Thanks for the feedback.