I am running XP Home SP3 fully patched.
I was having trouble with IE8 in that at times it was unable to follow a link and came up with a connection error. I tried the same action in both Firefox and Chrome and they had no problems at all.
So I decided to uninstall it and go back to IE7, which worked very happily. Uninstalled IE8 as per instructions, saw IE7's installation screen and subsequent install went OK. After the final reboot,
requested an internet page. Nothing happened, apart from an error message saying it couldn't find the web address. Check carefully, there is an iexplore and associated files in an appropriate directory. Click on it - nothing! So I decide to uninstall IE7. That works as well and when I click on the IE icon, IE comes up, and it's version 6. Well that's good. Go for Help and support, and it asks to install IE7. Yes, and again the install runs to completion. No icon, curious. Click on the Start/Program and the Internet Explorer item, again, nothing happens. Very curious indeed. Seems like there's only one answer, reinstall IE8, That works a treat, and up comes the normal browser window.
So where did IE7 go? I saw all the installation screens and the files, but when I tried to use it, nothing happened,