If the only browser in Windows is dead, how to connect to the Internet?

"Well, there is always the ftp program that comes by default - you could probably download an alternative browser that way.

If you can install additional utilities, there is Telnet through the Windows installer, so you can browse sites through port 80. (Telnet is no longer installed by default in Vista and 7)

There are many other nice tools such as wfetch, however, I think Telnet and ftp are the only programs that are built into Windows for internet that are not tied into Internet Explorer."

You could use an FTP client to download a browser. Of course, you would have to know the address of an FTP site that had a browser available for download.

"This issue came up when EU ruled that bundling of IE on Windows is a violation of antitrust laws, and consequently, Microsoft was told to remove IE from future Windows versions sold in EU.

So, without a browser, how are users expected to download another browser? Thus the answer to your above question of ""In other words, can you work with Internet without a browser in Windows? At least some basic operations - view page in text format or even html sources, download file through http."", is no, you can't.

FTP might get you somewhere, but you are probably limited to that, and only that."

Windows has built-in WebDAV support (which is apparently usable even for loading runtime libraries). This could be used to download a web browser. Of course, there's SMB (samba) too.

may be you should download a new browser from your friend's computer...Then use a flash disk to install it to your own computer to fix the error.That's it...