Cannot use neither rpm nor yum. Error message

[David Desscan]

I cannot use neither yum nor rpm after I compiled and installed
openssl-0.9.8.  I did the following before make install:

rpm -e --nodeps openssl
rpm -e --nodeps openssl-devel
make install

when I use rpm I get the following error message:

rpm: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.5 : cannot open shared
object file: No such file or directory

I get a similar message when I use yum.  Both utilities seem to need the
library libssl.so.5.
Is there any way to resolve this problem?  I tried reboot with my
installation CD but it does not give me the option to choose
packages.  I thought of reinstalling openssl from the CD.  I remember with
redhat 9 there was an option firstboot, which I
once used to add packages.
======================================================================================
An end user from ittoolbox forum suggested that I use rpm2cpio.  My question
is how is it that so many utilities depend on this libssl.so.5 file to
function?  How many utilities and applications depend on this library as a
vital component to function?  I can't get wget to work as well; I get the
same error message.  Is there a way to recover from such problem?

I tried rpm2cpio but unfortunately I get the same error message as with rpm
and Yum.  I tried something else this weekend.  I
 linked file libssl.a (the library file installed with openssl-0.9.8) to
libssl.so.5 but that did not solve the problem as well.  The error message
has slightly changed;

rpm2cpio :error while loading the shared libraries : /lib/libssl.so.5:
invalid ELF header.

I am running an update Fedora Core 4 ver 2.6.17-1.2141_FC4
I am thinking of downloading the source files for openssl-0.9.7f (which was
the version supplied with Fedora Core 4)compile and reinstall again.
However I doubt whether the libssl.so.5 file will be installed after the
make install command.
Is there a way of uninstall an application without using rpm?

Thanks guys for taking your precious time to help me.
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