Have you recently installed the newly released Internet Explorer 8? Realised what a piece of crap it is?

Yesterday I installed IE8 on this Vista desktop just to give it a whirl. For a start it takes it about 10 – 20 seconds to even open and load the first page. Also when I chose to open a link in a new tab the new tab would appear but the page would never load. It would get stuck on loading. It also altered my Explorer settings. I had Explorer (Windows Explorer) set to open folders in the same window yet IE8 changed it so they opened in a new window. So I decided to remove IE8 and go back to IE7. Luckily Internet Explorer 8 is classed as an updated and not a different program so doing this isn’t that hard as I explain below.

Update: I found out that the reason IE8 was taking so long at start up was the passive anti malware provided by SpyBot and SpywareBlaster.

You might want to read my entry on fixing some known IE8 problems first.

The instructions are pretty much the same for both Vista and XP with just slight differences towards the end.

First you need to go to Control Panel which can be found in your start menu. If you can’t see it look under the Settings item in there.
Once Control Panel window has things get a little different between XP and Vista.

XP:

  1. Open Add/Remove Programs
  2. Look for Windows Internet Explorer 8
  3. Click on it then click on the Remove button that appears

On XP you might also see an update to Internet Explorer 8 listed below it so remove that first.

Vista:

  1. Open Programs and Features
  2. Click View installed updates at top of list on the left
  3. When it has finished loading the list look for Internet Explorer 8 and click it to select it
  4. Click the Uninstall button that is at the top of the list or just double click on the IE8 item in the list

Once done you will have to reboot but after that you should be back to Internet Explorer 7.

Someone posted a comment in my other entry with a link to a Microsoft program to remove IE 8. You will find it at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700.