Uninstall Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 from the Command Line

It was early in the morning and Dave looked concerned. Firefox was one of the few programs he could get to work on his system because the beta of IE7 he had installed had not gone well. It was not working at all and because IE is integrated in nearly every other Microsoft application no other programs worked. System Restore won’t run because it uses IE7 Beta 2 to generate the application. Control Panel won’t run because it uses IE7 to generate the application.

How on earth do you remove IE7 Beta 2 from your system in the scenario? Luckily Dave and me worked it out.

* Download this file sysr.vbs.
* Run in a command box with the command ‘cscript sysr.vbs /rpenum’
* One of the lines will be Name: Installed %1 %2. Number: XXX Type: 0 Time: 20060201173746.080419-000 or something similar
* Run in the command box ‘cscript sysr.vbs /restore XXX’ – replace XXX with the number listed in the above line
* Reboot

With a bit of luck you will see the System Restore application running and you might just have control of your computer back again!