Ah - SR - now you're on home territory! (for both Mike M and myself!)
If you decide to go the uninstall/reinstall route with IE, then that may
solve your SR problem along the way.

WRT to your Sound issues - try this
Reboot to Safe Mode
Open Device Manager
Remove ALL Sound &Multimedia devices
Remove ALL error-flagged devices
Remove ALL entries in the 'Other Devices' branch - if present
Reboot to Normal Mode - Windows will reinstall the required drivers,
hopefully curing your problem.


Only you can make the decision about the address-book issue - I'm happy to
continue working on it, if you want.


--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2006, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.crashfixpc.com/millsrpch.htm

http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's
"BrianZ" <beezer000@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1133291290.827882.232700@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
> Noel,
> I renamed the folder.dbx file, rebooted and tried again -- with the
> same results. This was true for both of the User accounts attempting
> to use OE. I sense myself edging towards the point where
> deinstall/reinstall is the next best option.
>
> Since the deinstall/reinstall of IE/OE seems to be a bit of a high wire
> act, I am wondering whether it might be a better solution to load up
> Earthlink's MailBox, and move the email traffic over there. Then I can
> get back to the issues that were bugging me before OE went gitchy: (1)
> Figuring out why the Sound function disappears every time I reboot and
> (2) Finding a way (Gasp! Dare I hope?) to resurrect the System Restore
> function.
>
> Would this be a viable option from where you sit?
>
> Brian
>