Del button stopped working in MS Outlook Express 6

Question

I have this older XP machine that I use mostly to check emails and play Pandora in Firefox. I don't browse the internet on it or open any emails that I don't know the source of. (I'm more than what you would call an advanced computer user and I know how one can avoid getting a virus.)

I was always erked by a multitude of the popup update messages on that machine so I stopped paying attention to them about a year ago or so. But recently my friend insisted that I install all of them. For some dumb reason I gave in to this pressure and allowed updates to be installed overnight. In the morning when I rebooted my computer, it was visibly slower and when I was trying to play Pandora radio (the computer's main function) the playback was stuttering like crazy. It took me several days to find a solution. Eventually someone suggested to do System Restore, which I did. It helped to get rid of the "stuttering" in playing Pandora, but now I got a new problem.

When I open my Outlook Express 6 and try to type an email, I usually use Del key to correct words, but for some reason since I installed all those updates, the Del key stopped working. I know that the physical Del key works just fine (I tried it in Notepad without a problem) it's just that for some reason it doesn't work in Outlook Express.

I did some search online on this subject and almost every hit I got was suggesting reinstalling the IE. But, I do not want to install that piece of &$^#$ because I'm more than sure it was the cause of the issue with "stuttering" Pandora (I saw one of the updates was the update to the IE 8 or such.)

Is there any way to fix this not working Del key without installing the IE?

Answer 1

Well, seems like I have to answer my own question....

I couldn't find any graceful solution to my problem. (Well, I know it sounds like an oxymoron, "Windows" and a "graceful solution".) So I ended up downloading an installer for IE and installing it. That fixed the issue. Evidently that "beauty of the web" is so deeply rooted in Windows that it can't run without it... It is also funny that you can't even download their flagship IE9 and only IE8 because MS doesn't seem to care about an OS that is still used by a quarter of their users :)