Chrome has overriden IE!

Hello,

Hope this doesn't make me sound like too much of a luddite - I recently downloaded Chrome again (had done so before and uninstalled cause I didn't like the look of it but want to use it again). trouble is, I no longer have access to Explorer. it still appears prima facie on my hard drive but the icons have changed to Chrome and launching it opens Chrome. I re-installed IE8, restarted computer, everything, but am still having the same problem. Why?

it's not a super major deal as all my Favourites transferred to Bookmarks, but I did have a search toolbar that gave me frequent flier miles that I would like to recover. I also would like a more traditional browser for certain sites - currently I know only have Chrome (though it says Internet Explorer) and Safari - some sites only like IE or Firefox.

any help is much appreciated!