Not sure when the Logical Disk Manager went, but this morning I wanted to open Disk Management and it wouldn't open. I've also had no success with Windows updates for about three weeks now. I suspect the two problems are traced back to the same source. On startup I get the "Logical Disk Manager is not registered" but the few things I've tried using the oxymoronic Microsoft Help Center are ineffective.

OS is WinXP Home w/SP3. It started out as a Dell OEM setup, but I wiped the partition and installed a retail version using Dell's drivers where necessary. The laptop worked flawlessly for almost three years before this all started. The only thing I can think of that I installed at about the time this started is IE7. I had no intention of doing so, since I read so many problems here that IE7 caused on XP installs....but so many websites insist on IE7 that I gave in, and rued the day immediately. I uninstalled it successfully

Can someone help me sort this out in plain English?