IE - a previous installation not completed?

Hi. I am running Internet Explorer 5 on a 1200mhz AMD windows ME pc, and I am having some extreme trouble. If I try to upgrade to a higher version of IE it tells me that a previous installation was not completed and I must reboot my computer. I do so and still get the same message every single time. It tells me the exact same thing if I even try and install any updates or service packs.
Windows update is useless, it seems to be downloading the components and then refuses to install half of them, says it has installed some of them, but when I reboot and go back to windows update it tells me I still don't have them and need to install them. I have tried installing Internet Explorer over and over from different disks but all I get is the message about a previous installation uncompleted and my computer needing to be rebooted.
Any help on this matter would be much appreciated, I don't like the idea of me probably having Internet Explorer 5 when the whole world has IE 9.

 

you might want to check and see if your other Internet Explorer installation is cleared from the registry after you uninstall it. you can check this by Start\Settings\Control Panel\Add-Remove Programs and uninstall it from there as well. if the uninstallation is corrupt as well or is actually cleared from the registry, i'd suggesting reinstalling your operating system, which will reinstall all of its components as well but save all your data and configurations.

 

Try this:

Shut down Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.

Now go to Start/Find, and type wininit.ini
When found, highlight the file and hit 'delete'

Warning: don't touch Wininit.EXE or win.ini.


That should take care of your error message.

Cheers,

 

You are truly worthy of worship. The whole wininit.ini thing worked perfectly and I have now been able to download and install all the updates I could ever want! Thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!!! You smart ******!!!!! I love you!!!!!

 

You're welcome!

Glad to hear you got it fixed.

Cheers,

 

Thanks for the fix Tony, ran into that before and ended up using system restore to get back before the problem started and then upgrade again.
This is a lot easier..

 

No prob!

It's a familiar issue. Here's the article:

A previous program installation was never completed.