With no apparent/clear pattern, browsing has become seriously hampered by links that are completely dead when clicked. Sometimes I can click-through just fine, other times a link is completely unresponsive as though unseen.

For example when clicking a link within a homepage to another part of the same site, or to an associated but different website/database, that link may or may not 'work'...

... then after that the database that is linked may then have clickable text-headings to topic-reports, or may be a table of data where each cell in the table is a clickable-link to the subject material, and generally these links will be completely unresponsive.

It can be the same with sites suggested by Google and other search engines when performing a search ... some of the sites on the resulting compiled list will be 'live', others will not respond to being clicked to go there

However, If I right-click on any unresponsive link, go to 'properties' on the dropodown menu, copy the URL given there for the link, and then paste it right in to my browser, it opens in a heartbeat!!

I have done all the standard routines of clearing cache/cookies, resetting IE defaults, ensuring security settings are appropriate. I have checked for spyware etc and been given a clean bill of health by AdAware and Spybot. Ditto for viruses with Symantec. I can not recall that the onset of this symptom just over 2 weeks ago now coincided with anything else that I had either installed or altered at a similar time that may have conflicted with something.

And also, where the 'link' is in the form of a button such as the submit button that is staring me in the face right underneath the window in which I am composing this post, then that button is often also non-responsive ... (I sometimes for example request follow-up data from the source of some original material, and the forum handles that by posting like on a message-board)

... in fact, right now I may well be completely wasting my time without knowing it, because when I go to post this request after finishing, the button may well just sit there grinning at me with evil glee, stubbornly refusing to let me go any further - Sadist!!

So if you don't read this, you will know just how serious my problem is!! .. umm, well, no you won't, and that IS the problem!!

If you do read it however because this button is one of the rare friendly ones, or because it is perhaps feeling generous as today is Friday and it is meeting its special new lover and flying out with them this afternoon for a wonderful surprise romantic-weekend on a tropical island where there'll be just them and the azure ocean and the white sand beaches and the warm breezes rustling the palm fronds that filter the brilliant golden sun across their entwined bodies as the wavelets lap around their feet where they lie, lost in each other, enjoying their special magic and wanting it never to end, then please take a moment to let me know if you have any suggestions or even a fix should this symptom be something that you recognise??

Pleease?? Pretty-please?? Hitting virtual brick-walls at almost every turn, and having to go throught the right-click-properties-copy/paste-left-click process over and over and over and over and over and .. but you get the idea.

Frustrating is a word that comes to mind. So does revenge ... can you give a computer a good kicking without getting electrocuted? ... is cyber-murder a punishable offence yet??

... but anyway, if you can help you will have my deepest thanks, not only for restoring my sanity but also avoiding all my clients abandoning me because it takes me ten times as long to complete their work ...

Alternatively if you have this weeks winning lottery numbers, that would let me take a different but equally successful approach to the problem ..

Thanks

Shel

.. now, is this actually going to post at all anyway??

Accepted answer was:
Try going to start->Run and typing the following:

Regsvr32 urlmon.dll [hit ok]
Regsvr32 jscript.dll [hit ok]
Regsvr32 shdocvw.dll [hit ok]

Thanks. Not yet a clean fix however ...

... I ran the .dll s plus also carried out the Java-related actions that are also on that thread. As a result some of the problem is resolved but what remains still is the most significant part .. and from a raft of tryouts over the last 30 minutes it is clear that what remains now is an inability to open anything that has to open in a new window ...

It seems like that should suggest something if someone is sufficiently knowledgeable, in which case I would welcome knowing about it ... Anybody??

However, big thanks in any case Snowman for the progress to this point ..

I did download Firebird BTW, and it works perefectly so at least if I don't get IE fixed there's that to turn to as-and-when ... appreciated!!

Which isn't to say that anybody else with any further suggestions shouldn't bother to add them also, please!!! :))