I’ve been having some trouble with Internet Explorer 6 and wanted to find a way to reinstall it. There are a couple of resources out there that tell how to go about it, one from Microsoft itself, and one from some other guy. These instructions have you set a registry key to tell Windows that Internet Explorer is not installed. Well, that might have worked at some point, but Windows is a little bit smarter about finding your IE6 installation and refuses to install, even if you set that key.

Some people recommend a fresh install of Windows because this could indicate deeper system problems, but I hate reinstalling Windows, so I decided to get medieval with Internet Explorer.

Please note that this is a very aggressive repair strategy, and it may not work – in fact you may mess your machine up beyond repair. I do not recommend following this procedure, and I was probably insane to do so in the first place. I got lucky and it worked. If you aren’t as lucky, remember that it isn’t my fault and just reinstall Windows like a good boy.

Here’s what I did that worked.

The first thing I did was visit this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{89820200-ECBD-11cf-8B85-00AA005B4383}

This is the one you’re supposed to tweak by setting IsInstalled to zero. That didn’t work. Screw that. Blow it away. You can back it up by choosing Export from the file menu if you want, but this won’t work if that key is still around.

Likewise, you need to dig in and excise this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

Finally, you need to blow away the whole Internet Explorer directory:

C:\Program Files\internet explorer

To accomplish this, you need to hit F8 during Windows starup and choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt, or into the Recovery Console because the IE directory will be in use by the system.

After that, ie6setup.exe should run without error and then reboot your computer. This is where some trouble can occur. On my machine, the login box failed. winlogon.exe, services.exe, and lsass.exe all failed to load with this error message:

The procedure entry point AssocGetPerceivedType coupld not be located in the Dynmic Link Library SHLWAPI.dll

That really stunk, I couldn’t open Windows at all. However, at the next restart I hit F8 and chose Last Known Good Configuration. The system booted right up and the IE components finished installing. Because of this, I would recommend setting a system restore point before you get started.

Windows went on to download a few updates, but the pages that were being problematic are working correctly now. This appears to have resulted in a successful reinstall.

I have the same issue with one of my other machines (for some reason IE is having trouble connecting to the internet, but everything else connects just fine), so I’m going to try the same procedure there. I tend to keep Windows installations alive for a ridiculously long time, so these problems may just be artifacts of an aging install.