Hey.
I had a virus and my computer wasn't working well so I formatted the drive and reinstalled windows xp. Before I had the virus I had SP2 installed on the computer and it worked fine. This time I'm having a problem. When I installed it, my internet explorer quit working. It would bring up the browser but say page can not be displayed, but when I typed in a website URL (www.google.ca) an error box appeared saying "Internet Explorer cannot open up the search page." So the computer knows it was a search page, it just can't open it for some reason. And now I uninstalled SP2 and my computer works perfectly normal. Can anyone help? Any help at all is appreciated!

Were you installing SP2 from Windows Update?

There have also been at least 12 critical updates since SP2 including I.E. SP2 & updates.

Guess my thought is wondering if without all the updates I.E. SP2 may have problems.

What about firewall settings? Are you using another firewall outside of XP's?

No, I don't think I have any other firewalls other than XP's. For anti-virus I have Avast! 4 Home Edition. I did actually download SP2 from Windows update. Is that good or bad? Where should I get the internet explorer updates and the SP2 updates?

Windows Update is fine. Was just curious if you had the CD etc.

Once you have SP2 all the subsequent updates will be at Windows Update.

But can you access Windows Update after SP2? One work around might be to insure that SP2 is set for Automatic Updates.

Although you can run your Anti-Virus during download you should turn it off during installation of updates (including SP2).

Also, if you haven't already, it might be best to Save the download of SP2 to your hard drive before installing.
This way you won't have to re-download if you need to uninstall again.

Yes, I did save SP2 to my computer. If I download all of the updates needed for SP2 and I.E., and then install SP2 and the updates for SP2 and I.E., would it work? If you think it would, could you list the updates I need to download for SP2 and I.E. because once I install SP2 I have no way of accessing the internet.

I am not sure if it would change anything ... was just a thought ... I will post the list at the end of this post.
To find the download just do a Google search for each line.
In my brief test the first find is the download.

I am unsure if Automatic Updates will work without I.E. either.

Just out of curiosity: can you use Firefox with SP2?

You cannot get Windows Update with Firefox: just curious if it will let you browse.

Again turn off your Anti Virus while installing SP2.

Also just to verify: you can get an ISP connection? just not I.E.?

Windows Critical Updates for SP2:


KB873333
KB873339
KB883939
KB885250
KB885835
KB885836
KB886185
KB887472
KB887742
KB888113
KB888302
KB890046
KB890175
KB890859
KB891781
KB893066
KB893086
KB893803V2
KB896358
KB896422
KB896428
KB901214
KB903235