# Help the moron part Deaux

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-moron-part-deaux/86030>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 8, 2001, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-moron-part-deaux/86030 "2001-10-08T02:08:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Miss\_Creant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b487fb/32.png) [@Miss\_Creant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Creant)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-moron-part-deaux/86030/1 "2001-10-08T02:08:14Z")

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Ok, for reasons I even I don’t know, I deleted iexplore.exe from my computer. Now, I can’t open JPEG files  
What do I do?  
Can I reinstall it?  
Can I revive it from the hell that is the recycle bin even though its already been emptied?  
Can someone explain why I periodically go through my computer files thinking it will speed things up if I delete a few of these pesky files?

Can you help?  
Can anyone help?

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**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-moron-part-deaux/86030/2 "2001-10-08T02:17:19Z")

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Iexplore is Internet Explorer, which brings up the question of how you’re browsing. I’ll assume Netscape or some other browser.

You can’t just download the file; you’ll need to reinstall it from the Internet (probably at [http://www.microsoft.com](http://www.microsoft.com)).

If all you use it for is viewing files, then download Irfanview ([www.irfanview.com](http://www.irfanview.com)) or some other file viewer. You should also be able to configure Netscape to read the files for you.

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**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-moron-part-deaux/86030/3 "2001-10-08T02:28:47Z")

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Some software, if you’re interested:

[Here’s a Google search page full of standalone image viewers, most of which support JPEG files.](http://www.google.com/search?q=image+viewer&cat=gwd%2FTop%2FComputers%2FSoftware%2FFreeware&hl=en)

[R-Studio](http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?section=1311&file=63754): It says it can recover data even after the partition structure has been destroyed (like if you really blow it with FDISK).

[A Google search page full of undelete utilities.](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=undelete&cat=gwd%2FTop%2FComputers%2FSoftware%2FFreeware)

Undeleting isn’t too hard in Windows machines (and others, I’d imagine) because the standard delete function does not destroy the data, it just marks the position the data occupies as empty. If you don’t write very much to disk, ‘deleted’ data can stay resident for an arbitrary lenght of time. [Eraser](http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/download.html) is a very good Windows freeware program that actually overwrites data with ‘noise’ (random bits). It can also overwrite ‘unused’ disk space.

Reinstalling Internet Explorer is an option, but is not strictly necessary … unless you want to use it. 😃

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**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-moron-part-deaux/86030/4 "2001-10-08T03:10:46Z")

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Miss Creant, did your computer come with a Restore CD that might have IE on it, that you could reinstall it from?

What version of Windows do you have?

Also, my understanding was that it’s very difficult to remove IE in the first place. Are you saying that you just deleted a file called iexplore.exe? If you’re on the Internet with the computer that has its iexplore.exe file missing, then there’s a setting on Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Automatically Check for Internet Explorer Updates, which I _think_ (IANA computer person) will go to Microsoft’s website and fix itself. I had a problem with System Restore (Windows ME) and it wouldn’t restore from any of the restore points (broken), and it trundled down to Microsoft all by itself and came back with a fix for it (little box popped up, “Hey, didja know System Restore is broke, click on this and it will fix itself”).

So. FWIW. [shrug]

> [@](#):
>
> Can someone explain why I periodically go through my computer files thinking it will speed things up if I delete a few of these pesky files?

I have learned the hard way not to do this, and I suppose that you will, too. 😃

I once went through the Cookies file and carefully deleted all 2,000 cookies, only to find that (of course) I had thus deleted not only everyone’s passwords to all their message boards, but also that all the nifty shortcuts in the Systray to things like Realplayer had disappeared. People were ticked, to say the least.

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**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-moron-part-deaux/86030/5 "2001-10-08T07:14:47Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Help the moron part Deaux

I can at least help with the spelling.  
The french word for ‘two’ is spelled **deux**.
