BlogOfBob

January 19, 2007

@ 09:13 PM

I have given IE7 a fair chance, really… well I have! It started out as my default browser shortly after it was released. Then, after a week of watching it hang, and bring down half my system with it, I demoted it to my not default browser and put Firefox back as my default browser.

Of course various sites still require IE to function so I kept it going and would use it several times a day. But over the weeks it kept getting ever more fragile, and was finally starting to crash just loading Google as my home page.

(Hmmmmm, would Google do… Nah, I am not that much of a conspiracy nut!!!)

Anyway, today was the proverbial last straw and I uninstalled IE7. I am now happily back to IE6 for all things ActiveX and Microsoft specific, and use Firefox 2.0 for most of my day to day browsing. I can’t exist without some flavor of IE installed and 7 was just not working.

I will try it again, maybe when 7.1 comes out?

Cheers,

Robert Porter

Categories: Browser | Tools and Toys

« Vista, Typed Datasets, and Other Stuff | Home | Windows Live Search for Mobile now Live!... »

Saturday, January 20, 2007 1:34:18 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Sorry to read about this experience. The most common reason for severe IE7 instability are 3rd party add-ons. For example, there's some DVD burning software that comes on some machines that installs a hook into IE that causes problems.

Would you mind reinstalling IE and then booting it in "no add-ons" mode? To do that you right click on the IE7 icon on the desktop, or choose Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/IE (No add-ons).

I'd like to know if that does the trick.

thanks!
Dean

Dean

Saturday, January 20, 2007 11:06:31 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Hi Dean,

Thanks for the comment on my blog post about my issues with IE7.

I took you up on your suggestion, reinstalled IE7 and launched it by right clicking the desktop icon and selecting the no add-ons mode.

It was faster, but as soon as I reach 3 – 5 tabs or 2-3 tabs in 2 windows, it will lock tight as a drum. I have let it sit for as long as 30 minutes without it recovering.

The mix of sites open are typically MSDN, Microsoft, Google, and other development related sites. The exact mix does not seem to matter and the hang ALWAYS happens during a new window launch from a link.

Killing the locked process usually brings down every instance of IE as well as regular Explorer and often results in a series of “Could not reference memory” errors.

IE6, and Firefox do not exhibit this behavior.

Also not using addons would render it useless for me anyway as I heavily use addons like the Developer Toolbar and RoboForm. But thanks for paying attention. Nice to know someone out there is paying attention to us as users!

I would be glad to help diagnose this issue if I can. I certainly like IE7’s interface and features compared to IE6.

Cheers,

Robert Porter