🚀 go-pugleaf

Sadly, you are one of the folks who has not upgraded your hardware to a point that Adobe Reader 8 will work properly. This is also true for certain systems running Version 7 as well. The best alternative for you is to reinstall Version 6 of Acrobat Reader and leave it run. Security can be dealt with other ways. As to IE6 versus IE7-DO NOT attempt to install IE7 on your machine. The only advantage, according to Microsoft, is that IE7 connects better to their Updates. If you work mostly offline, then the updates are somewhat moot. There are many machines of the Pentium II generation doing well on the WEB running XP. I have 735mHz and 900mHz machines doing it with 256 megs of RAM and 20 GIG drives-so it can be done but not with IE7 or Reader above 7.0.8.
If you still have the master/recovery discs for the Dell-I would suggest that you refresh the computer from scratch and go from there. Please do a SEARCH for methods to uninstall Reader that I, Graffiti, MarkATS and others have offered. This is something that may well be needed in your case.
Sorry-so long winded. Good Luck