Internet Explorer Meltdown?

Hey again,

First let me preface this by saying this is actually for Vista Home Premium 32-Bit. Even though it's 32-Bit, still hoping I can get some assistance.

This copy of Vista was installed on my laptop OVER an existing copy of XP. Probably not the wisest idea, but it's been fine for a few weeks now...till now. I just wanted to mention how I installed it in the offchance it's a factor.

Anyway major problems with IE in Vista. It all started yesterday with something I thought was simple. I couldn't get IE to install Flash Player. I would goto adobe, click install, and the next page would never load the IE security bar to install an activeX control like it usually does. In trying to solve this problem, I used the master reset in IE to reset everything back to default...and that just made things worse.

Now IE does not have a Temporary Internet Files folder selected and no matter what I do, it wont let me select one! It keeps saying I don't have the space. Being that I have like 80GBs free, that's obviously wrong. Likewise because there is no folder selected, it wont let me set any kind of Temp Internet Folder file size. Says my Max I can make it is 8 Megabytes. Ha!

Even though I don't have a folder, when I goto "View files" it takes me to IE Downloaded Program Files and in there are only 2 files.

This is probably not going to help anything but one file is named {6414512B-B978-451D-A0D8-FCFDF33E833C} and it's status is "Damaged." Going to properties indicates it's an ActiveX control. How much this has to do with my ultimate problem, who knows, but though I would mention it.

Much as i hate to say it, I have a bad feeling a complete reinstall might be in my future. I just wanted to post and ask incase something can be done.

And this time, I will do a clean install. =)

Before anyone suggests it, System Restore is off. But I have recently been enlightened about the little fact that having it on does not hurt performance, so that wont be a mistake I'm likely to make again.

i think i read somewhere before that installing vista over xp is a bad thing because it has something to do with vista being (ntfs) and xp being (fat32) .i'd say do a new (clean) install . if you only have a upgrade disk then you will have to install vista but don't put the key in when asked. after instill is done then install again with the key.
scrooge

Well when I installed Vista a week so ago it was fine intitally. Everything else hasn't had a problem besides the IE thing. And my XP was alreadying using NTFS. But I don't know how that would of affected any problem I'm having.


So...guess I was right in thinking a reinstall might be needed.

Even though I am currently using Vista...I'm still going to have to reinstall it twice? (Since I do have an upgrade disc.) Starting from Windows and starting the install wont work with a clean install?