Internet Explorer 7 & 8

[John E]

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.

[dglienna]

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.

[HanneSThEGreaT]

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.

[John E]

It works! Thanks

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.

[HanneSThEGreaT]

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

[tossy]

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

[John E]

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.

[dglienna]

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?

[HanneSThEGreaT]

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

[John E]

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

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?

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

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?

[Arjay]

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

[dglienna]

iexplore -noext

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

[CBasicNet]

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/

[dglienna]

Well, I guess he never heard of it?

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

[John E]

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

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!!

Thanks for all the suggestions.