Help!

As most folks know I'm on aol out here, it's the only Internet service that isn't long distance from here. The only high speed Internet is satellite and that cost a fortune out here. We've lived here since '98 and each year the phone company has told us "soon".

Periodically aol goes weird on me and I have to uninstall it and put a disc in to reinstall. This has always been no problem, right up until last time. The last time I was uninstalling awy, minding my own business, not bothering anyone when I accidentally uninstalled one thing to many, something called photo album.

Now I have never in my life used photo album. It has nothing to do with the pictures I have on the computer, they're still there. What it seems to be is something very important, though. Although I've never used it, the computer won't start without it. So I am using this circa 1999 laptop again because Linda Lou won't let me use her computer. Actually she won't let me sit in her chair, she decided that the recliner, which she chose, hurts her back.

Anyway, the silly computer pops up this little screen, right in the middle saying that it's installing photo gallery. Then another little screen pops up from Microsoft.NET Framework There is a big X in a sorta stop sign shped red field and the following text: An unhandled exception has occured in a component in your application. Click continue and application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. (then it skips a line or two and says)

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Then there is a box over here and over here

Details continue

Now the box that says details is full of unintelligible computer gobbledygook and continue does nothing. No disc I have, not the restore disc, not the disc with WindowsXP, nothing will make this go away.

I do not wish to spend hours a day on an old laptop. All I want is to get online, read the blogs and news sites and write a little.

I only wish I knew this E-Machine was junk when I bought it. Does anyone have a suggestion?