The solution to the IE7beta problem is . . .

. . . IE7RC1! Yes, if you suffered problems arising from an unsuccessful IE7beta installation, then installing the release candidate 1 of Internet Explorer 7 should solve them. It can be downloaded from http://switch.atdmt.com/action/IE_7_RC_Windows_XP_SP2_mostcommon. Apart from an irritating validation process (surely, once Windows has been authenticated, one shouldn't need to go through this process again and again), installation is dead easy.
As well as providing an IE-type browser (if that's what you want) it also solved the Windows Media Player problem on our test machine.
Consideration of the relative merits of IE, Firefox and Opera is outside the remit of this blog, but if you use your browser to listen to BBC using the RealPlayer option, only IE allows you to jump forward 5 or 15mins in your selected programme. Also, if you are using WinAmp to access sound files, you will need to uncheck the Preferences option marked "Do not allow web content to execute or download Java/Javascript scripts and ActiveX controls" or you won't hear, for instance, the Flash content created using the excellent MP3SoundStream utility, downloadable from http://mp3soundstream.com/).

Notes:

• We have not tested whether the IE7RC1 installation also solves the ierutil.zip and normaliz.dll problems already covered in a previous blog, since we have already listed that particular workaround. If these persist even after the IE7RC1 installation, then download and copy them into the Windows/system32 directory (see previous posting for more detail on this procedure).
• Some actions may pop up an IE6 browser window, which is still non-functional. This is a comparatively minor glitch, but we're investigating its cause.
• With Firefox and Opera, when you open them up, they ask if you want them to become your default browser. But IE7 doesn't do this. So if you have previously set Firefox or Opera (or Netscape, come to that) as your default browser, then clicking on a link in an email (or even a Word document) it won't go to IE7, but to your previous default. Even using the useful AssociateThis program (http://www.spearit.com/downloads/AssociateThis_Setup.exe) didn't work, for some reason (we're still investigating this, also).