Search will not come up when clicked in XP

[Tom Brodrick]

I have an 2.2gig Dell with XP Pro. Since yesterday, when I right click on "my network places" and select "Search for Computers..." nothing happens. The window that would normally come up is non-existant. It is NOT running in the background either.

I can open "My Network Places" and then select "search" to make it work, but it will not work from right click menu.

Also, the "Start | Run | Search" doesn't work.

The other thing I noticed, is any website that has a Javascript redirect on it won't work (half of Microsofts pages). I'm thinking my Java Virtual Machine got hosed, so I reinstalled SP1 hoping to repair it, and that didn't help.

Very frustrating since I use (used?) this function many times per day.

Any idea on what I can try before I rebuild my machine?

[brentconn]

you can reinstall VM here

http://java.sun.com/getjava/download.html

[Tom Brodrick]

I tried loading MS-VM multiple times, along with Sun's Java etc. Nothing would fix it.
So, I did a system restore back a week, and everything came up functional. I would have rather learned how to fix the issue than just do a roll-back, but it was better than a total rebuild!