Internet Explorer 7 & 8

Until a week ago I'd stuck resolutely with IE6 as my browser of choice (in XP). I know it has a bad reputation but personally I thought it was pretty good. However, for the past couple of months I'd been having trouble with it crashing occasionally (disappearing from my screen, or even resetting my PC altogether). No matter what I did, I couldn't seem to fix it so last week, I decided to upgrade to IE8.

What a mistake! IE8 is supposedly Microsoft's best browser yet but on my system it was truly awful - slow and full of bugs. Fortunately I'd backed up my partition before the upgrade so I restored the old partition and did a new upgrade - this time from IE6 to IE7.

IE7 (apparently) has a bad reputation but so far, it's been okay on my system except for occasional "not responding" problems which require me to shut it down with Task Manager and re-launch it. However, I really miss the toolbar buttons that I used to have with IE6 (Favourites / History etc). I use those two buttons A LOT but now they're buried in a submenu somewhere. Does anyone know if it's possible to get them back onto my toolbar? I tried the 'customize' menu but that didn't seem to offer much help. :cry:

You can't be using a newer machine, or have a slow Internet connection.

Then again, your choice of sites may be confusing the new SmartScreen Filter.

In other words, I've been running it since Christmas on two machines with no problems.

Of course, I added it to Windows 7 in a Virtual Environment, and it has restarted Tab #1 a few times with the MSN.COM homepage. That doesn't really count though. :thumb:

I'm using IE 7, I'm quite happy with it. Yeah, I played a bit with IE 8, that's as far a I went with IE 8 - It didn't really make a good impression on me.

To partly answer your question.
The Favourites usually sits to the left of the first tab, along with the Add to favourites button. If you click on the Favourites button, it will open the Favourites pane, on the left of the screen.

It works! Thanks :thumb:

I must admit, I'm on the verge of giving up altogether with IE. It worked perfectly until a couple of months ago but since then, I've tried versions 6, 7 and 8. All three of them crash constantly (usually locking up my whole PC). I need to get this fixed. Is there any way to force a total reinstall of IE? (in other words, with all DLLs and other components guaranteed to be overwritten - even if they already exist).

Otherwise, I'll need to scrap IE and start using something else.

I get the occasional Not Responding message as well, I'd say once a week. I've always thought it was because I had to many tabs open. I know some of the sites like facebook especially freezes up my IE.
I'll see what I can find out for you about this issue in any case :)

I have experience with using IE 7, and its good for me. I have planning to give a try for IE 8....

Thanks Hannes - to give you some background, this started happening about 2 months ago after the processor fan stopped working on my PC. Natuarally, the PC shut itself down and I could tell from the length of time it took to restart that something was wrong. I removed the case, figured out that the processor fan had died and replaced it straight away (literally, there and then, using a spare). Since that day, IE has been crashing incessantly (typically between 1 and 8 times per day).

My PC can boot into 4 different OS's - 64studio and OpenSuse (two variants of Linux), Win2k and WinXP. Everything still works perfectly except that Internet Explorer under XP is now constantly crashing. I suspect that one of its components must have become corrupted. So if I can do a full re-install, that might hopefully fix the problem.

BTW I've already scanned my drive for malware and even for bad sectors but neither is showing up any problems.

You could try to roll back to 7, then back to 6 to see if that solves things. Of course, sites might not work as well in IE6 today, but it shouldn't crash.

Do you send crash reports? Does it ever open up the HELP screen with hints as the the cause? How about the system logs?

John, Did you try to run your IE in Safe Mode ¿
Start > Programs Accessories > System Tools > Internet Explorer (No Add-ons)

This will not load any Add Ons, and if it works properly ( test it for a day or so ), then it most likely is an Add On causing this. If it indeed an Add On, you can go to :
Tools > Manage Add-ons in the normal ( the one not in Safe Mode ) IE

And disable them one by one.

I hope this was helpful

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Originally Posted by dglienna

Do you send crash reports? Does it ever open up the HELP screen with hints as the the cause? How about the system logs?

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No David, I never get as far as sending a crash report or seeing any Help window. It simply locks up my PC and I need to reboot. Also, there's nothing in particular that seems to trigger it although I've formed a very vague feeling that it might be something to do with JavaScript. The only reason I think that is that my own web site has about 5 pages, only 1 of which contains JavaScript. That page has crashed a few times whereas the others haven't crashed at all (yet). Also, forums (such as CodeGuru) seem to lock up much more often than simpler web sites - especially when previewing a post.

I'd be happy to look at the log files. Do you know what the relevant logs are called?

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

John, Did you try to run your IE in Safe Mode ¿ [ ... ] ( test it for a day or so ),

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Hmmm.... not sure if I could work in safe mode for a whole day (!) but that's not a bad idea. Next time it starts happening I might boot into safe mode and just try using IE for an hour or so.

The other option is to take Google's hint and install Google Chrome. Anyone know what kind of reputation it's got?

Try the safe mode approach. It most likely caused by a bad add-in.

Code:

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iexplore -noext

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This will start it in Safe Mode, with addins disabled. It will nag about it as well.

Event Logs are in Administration Tools. Applications & Systems would be my first choice

Hi John, if you are not using IE for web development but for surfing web for information, you can try Firefox.

www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Well, I guess he never heard of it? :eek:

Download MemTest86+, make a boot device, and test your memory

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Originally Posted by CBasicNet

Hi John, if you are not using IE for web development but for surfing web for information, you can try Firefox.

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Actually I use FireFox (well IceWeasel, which I believe is a rebadged version) in Linux. It's nice in some ways and is supposedly "standards compliant" but I find that loads of sites simply don't look right in it. In fact the sites that look consistently good in FireFox/IceWeasel seem to be ones designed using Drupal (which often look wrong in other browsers!)

Never tried the Windows version though.

I'll try the safe mode approach and also the memory checker - though I'm celebrating at the moment because yesterday, I had my first "crash free" day in about 2 months!! :D

Thanks for all the suggestions. :wave:

Thursday was a crash free day but it crashed once on Friday so I ran some memory checks (for about 4 hours). Nothing showed up so hopefully, my memory is okay.

Today is Saturday and it's not even 07:30 yet (local time) but already IE has crashed twice. I looked in my event logs. The last crash was at roughly 07:10. At 07:09:40 I see 3 entries in my Applications log. All are from source ESENT and look like this:-

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wuaueng.dll (3264) SUS20ClientDataStore: The database engine has successfully completed recovery steps.

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Also, about 20 seconds earlier I see this error (Source = NMIndexingService)

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The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( NMIndexingService ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Service started.

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Everything else appears normal. My System log only contains errors relating to my parallel port (no devices attached). Everything else is okay.

I guess the only other thing I can do is try running in safe mode for a while.

[Edit...] Recently a button was added to CodeGuru so that when posting, you could easily recover your last post. This was very handy if CG crashed while posting or previewing a post. Anyone know what happened to that button? It seems to have gone. :(

Try visiting this web site. There's an opening animated graphic that settles down after 10 seconds or so, leaving a 'Menu' option at the bottom of the graphic. Clicking on the menu brings up a signpost with the item 'People and Contacts'. Clicking that item brings up an animated merry-go-round. Hovering over it with my mouse will change the speed and direction of the merry-go-round. With add-ons enabled that page is guaranteed to lock up my system within about 20 seconds. Does this give any clue to what the problem might be?

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wuaueng.dll

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indicates a problem with the Windows Update Service. Have you gone to Windows Updates since installing SP3? If so, there is FREE Support for any problem around SP3 (until June, 09)

Make sure you do ALL Windows Upates thru IE. There are surely some that you missed, including the new Windows Updet Service INstaller. There's one AFTER you installed SP3

John, what was the outcome when you started IE without any plugins?

Arjay - I ran it all day yesterday without plugins and it worked fine - right until the very end of the day when it locked up :cry:

David, I carried out an automatic update a few hours ago (actually, I had to do it twice because the first one went badly wrong). However, it's no longer crashing on that page that I mentioned a few posts back. So the initial signs are good and I'm hoping it'll last. My only worry is that I now have half a gigabyte more space on the drive than I had before I updated :confused: so an awful lot of stuff seems to have gotten deleted along the way. :(

NOT an Automatic Update. Use IE -> Tools -> Windows Update -> CUSTOM (not Express)

All of the Recommended Updates.

Click on Hardware Updates and add them all

Click on Optional Updates. WMP 11 is the main one.

Do this until there are no more updates other than optional software

It might take a few reboot cycles between them to get them all.

I hope this won't be "famous last words" but running Automatic Updates seems to have fixed the problem. Also, the big increase in my disk space turned out to be because all my old restore points had been cleared. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed but things are looking good, so far. :thumb:

You know I rarely ever run into issues with IE. Perhaps it's because I don't install unknown plugins and always have Windows auto-update running.

Yes, that's the same with me. I'm a great believer in the theory that if something ain't broke, there's no need to keep fixing it..!

Then, consider it ALWAYS BROKEN!

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always have Windows auto-update running.

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Words to live by...

I always have auto-update running to keep my windows vulnerabilities to the lowest. If your windows is not fully updated, some old exploits might work against you and steal your credit card numbers or passwords.

Sadly I eventually had to dump Internet Explorer. After running Automatic Updates I had a few days of trouble free operation but then the problems resurfaced. A couple of weeks ago I installed Safari and (touch wood) it's been stable, so far. Not entirely sure if I like it but it doesn't crash and that's a BIG plus!!

I'd bet that you are infected with viruses/spware, known as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program).

It could easily be detected and removed by most AV programs, except that nobody classifies a PUP as malware. It doesn't spread by itself, or infect other machines. 'User clicks OK' so we can't BLOCK IT!!!

The slowest thing about IE for me has been creation of new tabs. And in fact startup time is a bit too much too. I have been using Google Chrome, which is considerably low weight than IE, and probably so has a faster start-up time. Firefox had been faster in start-up time and creation of new tabs but I removed it in the past for no reason as such and haven't wanted to install it again. Don't want to have too many browsers installed. :)

The same trouble I see with Outlook 2007 as well. When opening the first email after start-up, it takes quite a few seconds. Then on it becomes ok. I don't know if that's a problem to be reported but I have continued to live with it.

Safari is okay from what I've seen but very typically Apple - i.e. an average performer, yet somewhat over-hyped.

I've only found one way to crash it so far and that's to press the 'back' button after submitting a form. With IE I could submit a form and then press the 'back' button twice in rapid succession. This would take me back to the page before the page that had the form on it. With Safari this just seems to hang the browser (but at least that's better than crashing the whole PC !!)

IE8 just crashed on me. I don't seem to notice them much these days. Google chrome crashes for me as well. I haven't tried finding out the patterns as I don't think much about these crashes (probably because they haven't crashed atleast when I might run the risk of losing form data). Touchwood.

IE8 restarts automatically, which is good most of the time