Windows 95 Help Desperately Needed

First time poster here. My girlfriend has a VERY old Compaq (don't know the make or model number off hand) and she has Internet Explorer 5.01 and it kept crashing every time she tried to open it. So I went to "Add/Remove Programs" and tried to remove it and a window popped up asking if I wanted to revert back to an older version, so I clicked on "OK" (in retrospect, a bad idea) and now the computer was running IE 4.01., which at least worked, despite a window that kept popping up asking "if I still want to open IE without scripting?" And I click on "yes" sometimes only once, but more often 2 or 3 times, till IE loads up. But when I try to open up Outlook Express, a window pops up and says something like "The application MSOE.DLL cannot be loaded", and therefore, she can't get at her emails. So I went to the Microsoft site and tried to download every Windows 95 update there was, and now and I installed them all and rebooted, but now even IE 4.0 crashes and the same window pops up when I try to open Outlook Express (the one that says "The application MSOE.DLL cannot be loaded"). And I would go to "Start/Find" and I'd type in "MSOE.DLL", I would find it (it's an executable file) and I would try to open it and a window keeps popping up, asking "What program do you want to use to open this program?" Now, I don't have a clue after that. I'm sort of a semi-novice at computers. I mean, I know more than my girlfriend, but I started out using Win98 - 2e myself and things with Win95 are a little different. But now I'm in over my head. I just want my girlfriend to be able to surf the web and open her email. Any suggestions? What program, after all, SHOULD i use to open up that "MSOE.DLL" file? Would that even help? I went to evolt.org and downloaded IE 5.01 onto my computer (again, I'm using Win98 - 2e). I just saved the file (did not open it) on my hard drive. Could I burn it to CD and install IE 5.01 on my girlfriend's computer? Would there be a compatibility issue, in other words, i burn the IEexe file on a CD on my computer (win98 - 2e) and take the disk over to my girlfriends, get rid of the IE 4.0 and install 5.01 off my burnt cd onto her computer (the win95 machine)? Like I said, she can't even get on the Web to GET any updates for Windows, or IE, or Outlook Express.

HELP!


Desperate boyfriend here! Any help or ideas would be appreciated in a huge way!


Thanks

[locustfurnace]

Yes, burn IE5.01 to a CD, then install it on your g/f system.
You can not open MSOE.DLL, its not an executable, this is either "Object Embedding" or "Outlook Express" support dlls'. Which are library files.
If she had 5.01 on it and it kept crashing, and you put it back on, Its possible it could do the same thing again, you might consider IE5.5
IE is a BAD idea for a web browser by the way. If she has things messed up on the system. Just consider letting things be. Get a browser which is better.
You can use Firefox, and Thunderbird. Firefox being a web browser, Thunderbird being a email client.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Firefox will be safer to run, less chances of scripting errors, less likleyhood of pop-ups. which can not be blocked with IE without thrid party apps. and the more apps you need to load the less RAM, Resources available, best to run a single app which support these features.

That's good advice, locustfurnace, and I will try it out. And maybe I will switch browsers for her. Actually, I might give her my old computer when I purchase a new one. (I got a Pentium 3 - 1 GHZ machine with a 60 GB HD and 512 MB of SDRAM and I'm thinking of getting a Pentium 4 unit built for me). But until that happens, she will be using her old Compaq. And also in the mean time, she HAS to get at her emails, as they contain attatchments that she needs for her job. So I will re-install the IE 5.01, as it will seem (according to your posted response) to restore that MSOE.DLL file and allow Outlook Express to run, and then she can get those attachments she needs. Actually, I will get those saved for her as she is, as I mentioned before, very inexperienced at computers. She still has trouble wrapping her head around the concept of using the right-click button on the mouse. Don't get me wrong, she's a wonderful person in every way (hey, I chose my nickname for a reason, you know!). She's just not tech-savvy at all. And once I save those attachments for her, then I would probably install that new browser you suggested.

Now, re: the potential for IE 5.01 to keep crashing, it never did that before and only started doing that in the last week. So something recently went wrong with that. I could be mistaken, but I thought that IE 5.5 wouldn't work with Win 95. That's why I didn't upgrade to it. She is stuck with Win 95 for the time being, and she does not have the Win 95 disks, as the computer was just given to her by her brother with everything installed. He's more computer savvy than I am but he's extremely busy and hard to get a hold of. Otherwise, I'd ask him for whatever disks he had for the OS and software for that computer. I'm glad Mozilla seems less prone to pop-ups and therefore not in need of anti-pop-up software, which my girlfriend DOES have installed on her computer. That ol' Compaq only has 24 MB of RAM and yes, it does get bogged down, and maybe a 3 or 4 GB hard drive. It's one of the first Pentiums that came out (don't know the processor speed). How compatible is the Mozilla browsing with working with a Win 95 system? Would an upgrade to Win 98 - 2e be feasible, on her old machine? Now, THAT i could do for her, once she's saved all her work and all that. 98 - 2e is not perfect either, but less headaches than 95. But is that enough computer resources to handle 98 2e? It would just be for about 6 months till I get my new system and she can have my old computer, which I would do a totally fresh install on. Any thoughts on this?

Anyways, I really do appreciate all the great advice I got here and on other posts in this forum. They may have saved my girlfriends work on the computer, for which I (and she) cannot thank you all enough!

Thanks, again and have a great day, everyone!

[locustfurnace]

Thunderbird is no different than IE, in that it too can download and save the attachements. Its diffferent in that it wont execute hidden files in attachment, unlike OE.
Its just as easy to set up as OE. and I believe, much easier to navigate for users not technically inclined.

Putting Win98 on that machine is not the best idea AS-IS. if you say its an older system with the first run pentiums, its then an extremely slow system. less than 100Mhz CPU Speed.
Win98 requires more disk space, more processing speed, possibly best around 133mhz, and more ram. i can not remember exactly, but the specs were something along the lines of
Win95 req. 4megs RAM (8 MB recommended), 386DX or higher processor (486 recommended)
win98 req 16 meg RAM (24 MB recommended). 486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster

Rem the requirements do not included the RAM needed to run applications, so in addition to the req's you need more ram for running IE, OE, and whatever else.

The harddrive space seems to be good enough. more than enough for someone who really is not a computer person. Someone who just uses it as a tool. thats plenty for doing work on.

I am not sure how well the Mozilla Firefox will work with 95, presently unable to test on any 95 machines. If you want, you could stick an older version of Netscape on. Check out http://browsers.evolt.org/ for older browsers.

If you are thinking of buying a new system, you should consider what your doing with it before making the purchase, alot of people run out to get the latest and fastest, only to find out, there is minimal performance gained. If you're just surfing the net, chatting and occasionally playing a solitaire game now and then, its really not going to improve at all.
There is a point when speed is fast enough and anything faster, is not noticeable.
When i built my last system, a AMD XP 2500 Barton Core, with a clock speed of 1.9Ghz, to replace my older AMD Thunderbird 900. the performance gain was unnoticeable for the most part. Why? Due to the fact that the 900 was fast enough. When it took mere seconds to accomplish anything. there is no improving on that.
The only area i see a boost now is in software compiling. Which really was the reason for building new system. I have many servers running on older hardware and they handle the task without much problems at all.
I've built Mp3 jukeboxs out of old 90mhz CPU machines.
About the only performance shown is in benchmarking for the most part. Which usually varies by a few milliseconds.
I'd buy something affordable, and get the most for your money.
if you want to buy a good used box. possibly a laptop? or your G/f might want a laptop for work. Check out this site, its extremely affordable, they are 'older' machines, but if your requirements are not heavy, to extremely heavy, then these prices and system are good deals!
http://retrobox.com/rbwww/home/search_type...sp?bin_id=world

Yes, I shall check out Thunderbird. I first, at least, want to get IE and OE running to get my girlfriend's email up and running and then I can retrieve her attachments. I haven't had the chance to do that yet, as I had to take my girlfriend to the hospital (she cut her hand and needed some stitches, not to worry, she'll be OK) and obviously that takes priority to any computer stuff. I have one question. When I re-install IE 5.01, will it re-install OE along with it, at the same time? Will my girlfriend lose her attachments and saved emails? When I tried to remove the original version of IE 5.01, it wouldn't let me and a window popped up asking if I wanted to revert back to the old version, which I did (as I mentioned in my first post). And then I couldn't open OE because a window kept popping up that said "The application MSOE.DLL cannot be loaded". Now, the BIG question is: Will re-installing IE 5.01 also re-install that seemingly corrupted MSOE.DLL file? (which seems to be the only thing preventing me from opening OE at the moment) I just want to be able to open emails and attachments. And once I retrieve that, then I can at least check out Mozilla (to see if it runs on a Win 95 machine) and also Thunderbird. Thanks, also, for the Netscape suggestion. I'll check it out. Thanks again for all the help. And my girlfriend thanks you as well.

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msoe a lot to explain right now as im pushed for time but the link may help you out a little

[locustfurnace]

It is possible you will lose all the old e-mail if no precautions are taken,
find the OE folder and just copy to a new location, I can not tell you the folder path, as I do not have this installed on my system. I prefer Eudora as my e-mail client, as it supports APOP and TLS e-mail servers (which is what I run.)

Some packages of IE5.01 wont include OE. So try to find one that is over 20 megs or thereabouts, this should also include OE.

If the e-mail was downloaded, it may have already saved the attachemtns in the OE folder, I know this is how Thunderbird performs, once you download the e-mail the attachemnts automatically are saved to a specific folder.
If the e-mail was not downloaded from the servers yet, then there wont be a problem retrieving them.