ActiveX disabled, possibly by a virus.

A friend called me over to fix his computer because it was behaving strangely and finally would not enter hotmail and instead just displayed the usual screen when you have no internet connection (but his internet appears to work fine otherwise). I was surprised to find he had no virus protection and had been operating like that since 2004. A scan found 21,240 threats which I removed. A second scan found another 1400 threats and finally it appears clean.

Now the problem. IE now says "Your security settings do not allow Web sites to use ActiveX controls installed on your computer" when ever it tries to talk to MicroSoft. The usual fix is to activate the controls by going into IE and setting them under Security/Custom. But that doesn't help here, WinXP continues to insist they controls aren't active even after a reboot. Any idea what's going on?

A second problem, this guy has lost his windows install disk (go figure), but he has the official sticker for WinXP Home OEM on his machine. If I have to reinstall windows, do you think I can use my WinXP OEM disk and his authentication number or do you need the exact disk?

It sounds like it has the add-on disabled. Go to Tools then Add-ons. Enable anything that should be.


To re-install, it depends. Some of the keys are special ones where you can't use a normal installation disc. The best bet is to try unless you don't have the restore CD handy.

thideras said:

It sounds like it has the add-on disabled. Go to Tools then Add-ons. Enable anything that should be.


To re-install, it depends. Some of the keys are special ones where you can't use a normal installation disc. The best bet is to try unless you don't have the restore CD handy.

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There are no add-ons listed....is that the problem?

orion456 said:

There are no add-ons listed....is that the problem?

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I would assume yes. Re-install Active-X, you should be able to find it on Microsoft's site.

I think activex is built into IE so I will try reinstalling that first.

Looks like windows installer is corrupt and that's why it won't use activeX. Any idea how to reinstall winxp home edition installer?

You can find the v3.1 Installer Package here...

Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FC-5F56-4A38-B838-DE776FD4138C&displaylang=en

redduc900 said:

You can find the v3.1 Installer Package here...

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Thanks for the link. Unfortunately you need activex to validate before you can actually use the installer.

I think its looking like reinstall time.

orion456 said:

A second problem, this guy has lost his windows install disk (go figure), but he has the official sticker for WinXP Home OEM on his machine. If I have to reinstall windows, do you think I can use my WinXP OEM disk and his authentication number or do you need the exact disk?

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You can use any xp home oem disk ( not retail though ) just be aware that they may have slipstreamed the drivers into his so you may have to do some downloading.

BytesBack said:

You can use any xp home oem disk ( not retail though ) just be aware that they may have slipstreamed the drivers into his so you may have to do some downloading.

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Can I use the OEM version to update what he has on his disks or do I have to do a complete reinstall of the whole system from my OEM disk?

Can you get a single file that has all the winXP updates since sp2 to the present?

I had a problem a while back (after installing ie7) that hosed up active x. The solution ended up pretty simple. I had to re-register my MSXML3.DLL and it went right back to working normally. I could not connect to the windows update site, my gmail page wasn't working right and I remember getting the same message.

orion456 said:

Can I use the OEM version to update what he has on his disks or do I have to do a complete reinstall of the whole system from my OEM disk?

Can you get a single file that has all the winXP updates since sp2 to the present?

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You can treat Your Oem disk just the same as his. This is assuming they aren't Branded disks. IE: not a Dell disk.. So long as its a Microsoft one with all the pretty holograms you can do whatever you want.


As for the updates, The correct answer is no, however, there is service pack 3 beta out there. I know people who have used it with no problems, but thats no guarantee you wont get any !

badvector said:

I had a problem a while back (after installing ie7) that hosed up active x. The solution ended up pretty simple. I had to re-register my MSXML3.DLL and it went right back to working normally. I could not connect to the windows update site, my gmail page wasn't working right and I remember getting the same message.

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How do you reregister a program? And how did you find that out?

Start | Run | Type regsvr32 msxml3.dll, and click OK.

redduc900 said:

Start | Run | Type regsvr32 msxml3.dll, and click OK.

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That didn't help unfortunately....but a reinstall with my OEM disk worked.

Thanks for all the help!