new error message?

[ginahoy]

I had to reinstall WinME. Unfortunately, my system reverted back to IE5.5 so I had to install IE6 again. This turned out to be a major headache. I ended up having to rename some dll's, etc. to complete the installation. In the end, all the advanced settings were lost (including my "trusted sites" list), but other than that, everything seems back to normal --except for PGO.

Long story short, I now get the following error when I try to refresh my messages:

Authorization Started
Error: The handle is invalid

Any idea what's going on?

David

UPDATE (edited): I discovered this evening that I also cannot access secure websites. Perhaps when I uncover the source of THAT problem, it will clear up my pgo problem. In the meantime, an explanation of the above error message might give me a clue in my troubleshooting...
Db

[Wilson Logan]

David,

I think its a registry error. If you've got a Reg cleaner type application you could try that or try doing a full deletes & clean installs of IE 6.0

Cheers,

Wilson.

[ginahoy]

David,
I think its a registry error. If you've got a Reg cleaner type application you could try that or try doing a full deletes & clean installs of IE 6.0

Hi Wilson,
I routinely run scanreg (came with windows ME) during startup. I suppose I should try a 3rd-party registry cleaner. Can you suggest one?

I can try reinstalling IE6 again, but that's what _caused_ the problem. I think the problem is due to having gone from IE5.5 to IE6 twice. BTW, I'm not aware of any way to "uninstall" IE. That's partly what the big anti-trust lawsuit was about.
David

[Wilson Logan]

Hi David,

Check this out:

http://windows.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.microsoft.com%2Fsupport%2Fkb%2FARTICLES%2FQ217%2F3%2F44.asp

BTW You'll have to cut & paste that whole URL into your browser to get it to work.


Cheers,

 Wilson.

[ginahoy]

Hi David,
Check this out:
{snip}

Hi Wilson,
The article you linked to was for Win98/IE5. I easily found a similar page for IE6/WinME, but it only descirbes how to revert to previous version, not how to do a full uninstall.

Perhaps there are specific steps in this procedure that would have avoided the initial IE6 install problem, but in hindsight, I now know how to restore an individual file from the CAB file using extract (ext) command. Had I remembered this yesterday, I could have avoided the conundrum of reinstalling Windows, and all the issues that arose from that.

In any case, I just found the problem with secure website access. As it turns out, one of the microsoft articles I found when troubleshooting the initial IE6 install problem said to rename six dll files in the system directory to *.old, apparently to force IE6 install to copy newer versions. As an afterthought, I went back to verify that all six had been replaced by IE6 installer. As it turns out, one of the (wintrust.dll) had not been re-written (damn Mircrosoft). So I simply renamed the original file back to .dll and everything seems fine now.

BTW, this changed the pgo error message from "invalid handle" to "invalid password", which I knew how to fix (I simply needed to add http:\\groups.yahoo.com back to my "Trusted Sites" zone list since I always block permanent cookies in my "Internet" zone.

All is well again.
David

[Wilson Logan]

Hi David,

I'm glad you got it sorted.  If it'd been me I'd have just flattened the thing & tried again. I admire your tenacity.

Cheers,

Wilson.