Suggestion -- when/if you get the replacement software, back it up immediately on to a CD (along with a text file containing the registration code). This has saved my bacon more than once...
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
No, that is not what I meant. What I meant was that IE give websites to much access to your computer's hardware. For some purposes, like Microsoft Update and online virus scans, you really need IE, but for surfing other sites, such as this forum, you really don't need this kind of access to your hardware.
Of course, this kind of advice shouldn't be necessary, but until someone (Microsoft, Apple, Linux community) writes useful operating systems for the general public, you have to be a kind of security expert if you don't want to be exposed to all kinds of dangers on the Intarweb.