I suspect this is headed toward John in Kansas, but any who can help, please jump in.

I may have done something REALLY DUMB. I upgraded my Windows software (I have Win2000 professional) with various patches from the update site at Microsoft. Several must be loaded individually, and then the computer must be restarted. I have done all of them except the newest version of Internet Explorer. This evening I put the Servicepak 3 on (I had it archive my files so I can supposedly uninstall it if I wish).

Anyway, I keep a number of popular links as shortcuts on my active desktop. So if I'm interested in going to see what is going on at Mudcat Lyrics and Forum, I just click on the desktop Icon instead of opening IE first and then going to Favorites. My shortcuts for other programs work, but anything with IE (except the IE program itself) won't open. I get the message "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options control panel." I have in the past had to "associate" programs, but not for a long time. And when I visit the Folder Options folder in Control Panel, I can't find the files that are apparently orphaned now, and when I find something that looks likely, I can't make it associate with IE because no icon for IE is in the choices for associations.

This explanation probably isn't entirely clear, because there are so many dialog boxes to try to navigate or describe. But has anyone experienced this "loss of association" before, and what did you do? Should I uninstall the Servicepak? I had been considering installing the latest version of Internet Explorer. Would that help? Or is that any good? (I ask because I'm regretting updating my Netscape on my ME platform. This newest version stinks, so I didn't upgrade it here on my Win2000 platform.)

SRS