Fixing Internet Explorer Problems

One of the most common browser-related questions I receive is about Internet Explorer v7 or v8 misbehaving in some fashion. Even seeing the browser refuse to start up at all is not that uncommon.

Internet Explorer does not provide an uninstall option on the Windows Start menu, and it’s not all that unusual to find there is no entry for Internet Explorer in the Control Panel’s Add or Remove Programs applet. For an explanation of why this might be so see my article Understanding & Troubleshooting the Add or Remove Programs Applet.

So what to do?

Here is a process that will more often than not resolve such problems and get you back to the latest Internet Explorer version behaving as it should.

To save covering the same ground twice, I’ll assume we are starting with a broken IE8, but if IE7 is your current version just skip the first step.

Proceeds as follows…

Download IE8 to your desktop. Don’t execute it yet, just leave it there ready.

Now please note that in the following steps it is MOST IMPORTANT that you reboot your PC every time you are prompted to do so. This is CRITICAL. No matter how tiresome the repeated reboots, DO NOT DEVIATE.

STEP ONE

Remove the current non-working IE8 using this file that should already be on your computer:
C:\WINDOWS\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe

When that’s finished (and after rebooting) your system will default to IE7 if it was installed before IE8, or otherwise to IE6.

STEP TWO

If IE7 is the new default version, and whether it works properly or not, remove IE7 using:
C:\WINDOWS\ie7\spuninst\spuninst.exe

After a reboot your default version should be IE6, which hopefully will run OK.

STEP THREE

Now double-click the IE8 file you downloaded to your desktop, thus starting the IE8 installation.

With any luck at all, after the mandatory reboot IE8 should be running OK, but you’re not finished yet.

STEP FOUR

Open IE8 and navigate to the menu item Tools/Windows Update, and download any updates that are offered. You will probably be prompted to reboot after updates are installed.

Keep going back to Tools/Windows Update after each reboot until there are no updates left for you to retrieve. By default Windows Update will only offer you updates of type “High Priority”, but if you look in the left-hand menu, under the heading “Select by Type” you will see that there are also selections available for “Software, Optional” and “Hardware, Optional”. You may have to go into Windows Update several times to retrieve all the updates that are available.

That’s it! With any luck at all you will now have a clean working copy of Internet Explorer v8.

But in the interests of both security and productivity I really can’t finish without adding this comment…

If you look around the ‘net you will find countless reports of problems with IE7 and IE8, many similar in one way or another, some quite different altogether.

But these are not potential problem you will likely have to face if you make your day-to-day browser the far superior and far less problem-plagued Firefox web browser.

I’m not saying you should ignore Internet Explorer altogether. Unfortunately it is still necessary for some operations. I strongly recommend you make a habit of keeping Internet Explorer updated, but never use it unless absolutely necessary.

There is no problem at all with having more than one browser installed at the same time, or even running simultaneously. I have Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome and Firefox 3 all installed, but rarely ever use anything but Firefox.

You will be doing yourself a considerable service by adopting the same policy.

Firefox is quite simply a more useful, more versatile, less troublesome AND MUCH SAFER web browser.