Hi Dig:
What's important to know is that IE is part of the W7 OS kernel, which means that an earlier version of IE came with W7 depending on whether your computer was installed with W7 or W7 SP1, you could have IE8, IE9, or IE10. Usually, IE11 is an add-on to the earlier IE versions that came on most W7 install media or factor pre-loaded W7s. If you don't recall
SPECIFICALLY downloading and installing IE11 onto your W7 machine, then IE is there, but not IE11. That generally does not get installed through the automatic MS update push process.
This being said, if you cannot get to any version of IE on your computer, you've either inadvertently uninstalled it (which usually can't be done), or a virus/malware attacked your system and simply disabled it from running. There's about a thousand viruses whose sole mission is to disable or cripple IE, as it's the world's most ubiquitous browser. You might wish to scan with your AV program and also download the free
MALWAREBYTES from Malwarebytes.org to scan/remove any viruses. It's important to know that removing many of these browser-disabling viruses often renders your computer unuseable.
It's important then to observe my backup warning below before proceeding to more drastic repair solutions.
There are 4 things you can try to get it working again (and thus check what version you have installed) once YOU BACKUP ALL YOUR PERSONAL DATA TO EXTERNAL MEDIA IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY DONE SO! 1.) Use Windows System Restore to rollback your system to a point in time before you lost access to your IE; e.g. 3 days, 1 week, 3 months, etc. RETEST.
2.) Use your Win7 install or recovery media or built-in recovery partition on your hard drive to run an "in-place" upgrade on your computer to refresh all system files. RETEST.
3.) Use factory Recovery Media or Recovery Partition to do a Windows reset on your PC, and restore it to
Out-Of-Box (OOB) condition. RETEST.
4.) Use factory Recovery Media or Recovery Parittion to do a Windows reinstallation on your PC, and restore it to
Out-Of-Box (OOB) condition. RETEST.
If none of the above works for you, you could be fighting failed hardware and you will need to test it for possible failures and physical replacement.
Take a look here: MEMORY DIAGNOSTICS:
Memory Diagnostics HARD DRIVE DIAGNOSTICS:
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure We recommend running the hardware diagnostics FIRST if you have the time, since if you apply any of the 4 methods above and they do not work because of failed hardware, such as a RAM stick or Hard Drive, you can reset and reinstall until the end of time and never fix your problem! That's because no software on the planet can fix Broken Hardware!!
In most cases; probably better than 90% of the time, this will fix your missing or corrupted IE problem.
Let us know how it turns out. <<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>