An unusual problem has recently surfaced for which IE8 has taken (incorrectly) the blame.
The symptoms are that a system will run quite happily until the next reboot. Or rather the next non-reboot. The problem is that boot.ini file has been deleted. It turns out that a combination of the Ask! toolbar and IE8 can cause this file to be deleted.
So a user boots normally and installs the toolbar (perhaps inadvertently - it is included with the installation of many programs nowadays with the default setting being opt-in). System running fine. Then the Ask! updater kicks in and removes the file. Next reboot, no boot.ini, so no HAL.dll (invoked by boot.ini) and you are stuffed.
The solution is to boot from a Windows installation disk to the Recovery Console, run the command bootcfg /rebuild to rebuild boot.ini. Then boot up normally. At this point boot.ini will have been deleted again. Remove IE8 from Add/Remove Programs and uninstall the Ask! toolbar. Boot from the CD and run that command again to rebuild boot.ini, then re-install IE8.
From then on your system should boot normally every time.
And never install that toolbar again!
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