Stilly -

Last question first: - I hung onto IE5 for a long time, simply because I was not too confident that they were telling the "whole truth" about newer versions; but I finally reached the point where a newer version was shown as "mandatory" to install some of the security fixes, and installed the "latest," which I believe is still IE6. (I've had a couple of updates since the "big move.")

Based on my experience, in Win98, Win2K-Pro, and WinXP-Pro, the latest IE won't hurt you. I have a general impression that it's "better," but most of the things it adds in are not that visible. I have not had any problem with "losing" any existing functions.

Note that the same does NOT apply to MSN Explorer, which is a different animal altogether. New releases of MSN Explorer often disable old capabilities that MSN (not the same thing as Microsoft) thinks you don't need – and MSN will not give you a straight story on their "upgrades."

Re Win2kPro SP3: There is apparently a little bit of "untruth" in the download package. You can "uninstall" SP3, but there are a few features included in/with it that cannot be uninstalled. This isn't generally something to worry about - unless you're a network administrator concerned with Win2KServer managing Win2KPro machines, as most of the "unremovables" are features that are only used by EServer setups, You can get details at Win2K Home by putting "SP3" into a search. Click on the "Download Windows Service Pack 3" and then look especially at the "readme," and "deployment information" packages. Note that I'm not recommending that you need to look at all this – it's just there if you're curious.

Win2KPro SP3 does incorporate a "wrap up" of previous fixes, and installation should be considered to be in the "good thing" world – unless someone else comes up with arguments I don't know about. Just be sure you get the "Pro" version, and not one of the half-dozen "Server" versions.

There are a couple of ways that you can get a "url" shortcut onto the desktop, and some of them are known to cause problems – and the shortcuts they produce sometimes stop working with even minor changes. A "significant" change like Win2KPro SP3 (or any change that requires a reboot) can break desktop links – especially if they're anything but "plain vanilla" shortcuts to an executable file. Shortcuts via IE to a specific url don't really fall into the "plain vanilla" category, since they must "open an executable,' and send it what amounts to "second hand" data as an "argument" to execute on.

I'll assume you used only the conventional method:
1. Open IE
2. Go to the site
3. Add the site url to Favorites
4. Click on Favorites, right-click the link, select "Send to" and then "desktop."

While it's theoretically possible to "hand edit" an existing shortcut to make it work again, it can be a rather complex process that depends on how the shortcut was created. It would probably be simpler to make new links, using the steps above. The desktop icon may give you the url you used if you right-click and select "properties." In some cases, the desktop icon shortcut may only point to the "real" shortcut, which will generally be in C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Desktop. Right-clicking that file (which need not have the same name as the desktop icon) should generally give you the url, if it's not available on the desktop. You can probably copy (Ctl-C) the shortcut from the "properties" target box. Paste (Ctl-V) into Word or notepad if you need to "edit" to get it cut down to the actual url. Copy and paste into the address bar in IE to connect up.

Try creating one or two new desktop shortcuts to urls, and see if they work. If it does, I'd recommend just rebuilding – and delete the broken ones (AFTER you have the new ones working).

IE doesn't normally appear in the "associate" utility, and it's rather tough to make that association by hand edit. Too many variables depending on how your Windows and your IE are set up.

I'm reading your query to say that other shortcuts still work. It's only links to urls that are broken? If that's not the case, it may need some other research.

John