Safari 5.1 (7534.50) not working

Question

I bought a brand new Windows 7 machine a while ago and installed Safari 5.0 on it.   It always had a problem getting to gmail.com.   I'd get a message saying it couldn't verify the security certificate.   I finally tried installing a later version.   Now Safari does not work at all.   It runs but it never finds any websites.   Here is what I tried (unsucessfully) to fix this.
1) Use Windows restore to before I put in new version
2) Reset Safari
3) Completely uninstall and re-install (both an old 5.05 version and the newer version)
4) Create a new user and try running on that user
IE and Firefox continue to work, but I like Safari.   Any thoughts?

Answer 1

When you install an Apple app, it installs the latest Apple common support components, so unless you uninstall that also, you haven't downgraded completely. Those libraries are shared by iTunes, Safari.
Safari: looks nice, but detest it performance (or lack) and had to get rid of 5.1 totally.
Older versions than 5.1 have security risks, not multi-threaded, poor performance as a result, and I need to have bookmarks I can work with, on the side (as IE9 and Firefox) and not menus.
Apple and Safari have components in AppData and Windows ProgramData and ProgramFiles (x86).
I would not rely on Safari's Reset to actually remove its stored files.
Also new version can be affected by extensions and plug ins that use to work but won't, usually for security purposes.