Living Without Internet Explorer

One of the (many) reasons to hate Microsoft is Internet Explorer. So for many years I have eshewed that product and used other browsers such as Opera, Firefox and Safari. However, it was always there lurking on my hard drive, like Smeagol, sulking around in the darkness and getting up to Bob-knows what.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I found XPlite and I was finally able to hurl that maggot infested piece of orc-meat into Mount Doom, along with it’s festering cousin Windows Media Player. Life was good, real good. I used Firefox, VideoLan and Media Player Classic. Then a friend put me on to The Dub Side of The Moon, by the Easy Star All-Stars

along with the Floydian Propulsion Project and The KLF Chillout.

At which point I discovered that iTunes wouldn’t start. Well it did start, you could see it running in Task manager, but the GUI failed to appear. Apparently iTunes uses some cryptographic components of Internet Explorer (probably for it’s Spawn of Satan DRM).

With Some help from The Evil Empire I traced it to missing cryptdlg.dll and initpki.dll

I found copies in c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386\ and c:\windows\$ntservicepackuninstall$\

Copy the latest version to c:\windows\system32

At a command prompt enter cd\windows\system32

Enter regsvr32 initpki.dll (takes a while to complete)
Enter regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll

iTunes should now run properly. If that doesn’t help work through all the steps at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822798, for other parts of the cryptographic module.

If you need explaining the relevance of The Wizard of Oz to the Dark Side Of The Moon, then you are probably a Friend Of Dorothy and and not a Floyddroid.