DISCLAIMER: I am not a computer person. I have an antique Acer with Win95 and IE5 and a 486 processor and a 14.4 modem. So you know where I’m coming from. But I’ve done my share of arm-wrestling with Internet Explorer.
I am 75% certain that what you need to do is either repair or reinstall Internet Explorer. (This advice is for IE5.) I’m assuming you have it on a CD somewhere, provided by your new ISP? Don’t waste your time with the FreeWeb one, obviously.
First try repairing Internet Explorer. Click on Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, scroll down to Microsoft Internet Explorer, click on it, it’ll prompt you “Repair Internet Explorer”. Do that. It can’t hurt and it might help.
If this doesn’t help, you can try reinstalling IE5.
To do this, you first need to uninstall it (don’t ask :rolleyes: ). Click on Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, scroll down to Microsoft Internet Explorer, click, Add/Remove, it’ll prompt you to Uninstall. Try that.
HOWEVER, before you try this, make sure you have your Internet Favorites (bookmarks) saved on a separate disk somewhere, and also your e-mail address book, printed out if not saved on a disk. Also any off-line Web pages you may have saved.
I would strongly advise you not to fool around with RegEdit unless you really, really know what you’re doing.
You can do a Find to look for an ad banner .gif, although sometimes simply deleting that won’t work, and it sometimes makes it worse, because it leaves all kinds of .dll and .ini and .exe files laying around afterwards, that can really mess with your computer’s head.