>Well, guess what! I went to the MS Windows Update site. There was a "Critical Update" for some security thing (sorry I can't give a better description <g>)
>I applied it and IE has now snapped up every time. Ok, 3 times, but that is a great improvement! Will it last?
>
>The reason for trying this was, I polled everyone in the office and all of us with IE5/Win98SE were experiencing this except for one guy who had applied the update. Could be coincidence. (YMMV) I will report back if the "hang" returns.
>
>BTW, I haven't tried any other D/Ls. I'll report back on that as well.

FWIW, I hadno problem upgrading 5.0 systems including Win98 SE, but my browser and updates were very current, and I have the beta WSH components in place already. I also run the 128 bit encryption version.