I have a compaq presario with WinXP pro with all updates upto service pack 2. that means sp2 isnt installed.

I use it to login to my network at college. Once, i could login to the college network, but could not go on to the net. I talked to the admin and he started to tinker with my laptop. All network settings were ok.

So the bugger uninstalled my Internet explorer.
Then he ran regedit and deleted every entry having Internet explorer.

Then he attempted to install IE again. Couldnt doit. Tried it insafe mode. Same result. Couldnt run a system restore. as it needed a version of IE to run.

Only option before me is to format: or is it?
Someone help.

Then he attempted to install IE again. Couldnt doit. Tried it insafe mode. Same result. Couldnt run a system restore. as it needed a version of IE to run.

System restore doesn't need IE to run. Click start, click All programs, click accessories, click System Tools, click System restore, choose Restore may computer to an earlier time. Now choose a date before the problems started to occur. HTH

when you say your friend tried to re-install Internet Explorer, exactly how did he do it??

first I tried MDM. It needed IE 4 minimum.
In the safe mode, the system restore didnt work (ie only the title bar came up with the window sizing buttons ( _ o x ) and a blank screen below it. maybe i didnt have any restore points manualy done, but i suppose those points are automatically created when you run windows update.

Secondly, the admin had an offline setup iof IE which did showed an error when i attempted to install saying that some components could not be installed, please run setup again. I have not tried other browsers like opera.
nor have i tried to install from other setups of IE.