I don't if they are in direct relationship to eachother, but I recently installed a couple of security patches for iexplorer... now, I can't go on any search engine pages (I tried all I could think of) because I get the same error message. "Internet explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." the error signature is AppName: iexplore.exe AppVer: 6.0.2800.1106 ModName: winshow.dll ModVer: 1.0.0.8 Offset: 00002156... What's up with this? Also... I have noticed I can't access floppy disks because it says they haven't been formatted... which in itself is false... but even when I select to format the disk it says that they can't be formatted... is there any correlation between these two matters because they happened at nearly the same time? ... thanks for any help

update: ie problem was apparently spyware or something..fixed now... but the floppy drive is still not functioning correctly.....

matt: for the floppy; 1. ensure Write Protect on the disk is off. 2. open the BIOS and look for the Diskette Options to ensure that: * diskette controller is enabled * enabled for 1.44MB use your F1 key to see what options are available at any given setting. Save and Exit. 3. do an AV scan on the diskette. 4. visit the floppy maker's web site and search for the latest driver.