IE8 Problems & Fixes

OK having recently installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and had problems with it I was determined to find what was causing the problems and how to fix it.

Before trying any of the below first try resetting IE8 to it’s defaults. Open your Control Panel (you will find it in your start menu) and then open Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab and you will see the Reset button at the bottom.

Also it might be worth trying IE8 without add ons to see if it’s not something you have installed that is causing the problem. Just right click on the Internet Explorer shortcut (not the one in the quick start) and selct Browse Without Add-ons.

Problem:
IE8 takes around 10 – 20 seconds to start up and load first page!

Solution:
I found that this is due to the passive anti spyware method used by programs such as SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster (mostly SpyBot to be honest).
To fix it open SpyBot and click Immunize. Untick/deselect the hosts file entry and then click Undo at the top of the window. This should remove all immunization except the hosts file immunization. You can leave the hosts file immunization in place as this is used by the system to block bad domains and not IE8.
For SpywareBlaster I clicked Protection Status then Internet Explorer and unticked/deselected Cookie Protection. I left the Active X protection in place.

Problem:
When I open a link in a new tab the page gets stuck on loading!
Windows Explorer has started opening folders in new windows!

Solution:
After some Googling I found that both of these problems are down to a dll not being registered properly when IE8 was installed. The site I read tried to blame anti virus software for blocking it but I had mine disabled.
Anyway to fix it depends on if you are on XP or Vista as Vista requires the command prompt to be run as admin. I will first explain how to open the command prompt window for each Windows and then the instructions are the same for both.

XP: Open the start menu and click Run (or press Windows key and R). In the window that opens type cmd and press the enter key (or click OK).

Vista: Open start menu then click All Programs. Next click on Accessories. Now right click on Command Prompt and then click on Run as administrator. Click Continue in the window that pops up.

Now we have the command prompt open just type in regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and then press the Enter key on your keyboard. That should fix both problems. Now type exit and press Enter to close the command prompt window.

To be honest you might want to just ditch Internet Explorer. Given the amount of people that have had nothing but problems with IE8 it might be worth your while looking at other web browsers such as Flock, Firefox, Opera, Chrome or even Safari.

Leave a comment ?

134 Comments.

  1. Thanks for the info. I’ve been waiting for the problem resolution since I install IE8. But went to Firefox because of the issues with IE8. But now I use them both. Don’t know which I’ll keep. ANy ways thanks. Amazing how the IE developement team can’t even resolve thier own problems ehh?

  2. I have XP MCE SP3 and the new IE8 on my desktop.
    a couple days ago, it started reading some websites as if I was a mobile device, and I can’t get it to stop. I lose a lot of content on some website because of this. anyone else know how to fix this?

  3. I am having an issue closing IE8 down and all the tabs are missing the descriptive names, do you have any suggestions as to the cause of this ?

  4. Thank You!! It solved the problem for me.

  5. I installed IE8 and had nothing but bother, uninstalled it with your directions and now i open my browser and it just says windows cannot display the webpage!! PLEASE HELP!! Need to give this computer back to work on monday and ive broke it :(:( Its windows vista! Ive tested the internet connection but thats fine!

  6. i have wireless though!

  7. I did that then brought up the internet and it trials to dial up!

  8. yep i did ooopps clicked the wrong thing! I changed it to auto detect now but still nothing!! Im going to get into lots of bother!!!

  9. ok now this thing called Safari has popped up at the bottom of my screen, and i can access the internet through that! Any ideas what Safari is?

  10. think ill need to stick with safari atm till i get it looked at! Cant get on the internet to download any of those!! Thanks for your help :)

  11. If Safari is working then surely you can use that to download one of the others?

    When you said the internet was working fine how did you test this?

  12. When I R.click on a picture and try to open it up in Windows Pictures It locks up any help would greatly be appreciated.
    Thank You
    LC

  13. The icon that opens up my outlook express on ie 8 when you click on it does noting I checked to make certain that outlook express is the default email program even reset it uninstalled and reinstalled ie 8 uninstalled and reinstalled both sp2 and sp3 cleand out register nothing worked Sugestions?

    • Hard for me to answer as I now use Windows 7. Have you opened up Internet Options, clicked the Programs tab and clicked the Set programs button?

    • Try right clicking on that shorcut got to the properties and look and see where the shortcut path is leading to. Or just delete that shortcut and create another one.

  14. Problem fixed: I just got off the phone with microsoft
    this is what you need to do

    right click on start go in to propertys
    go in to the top cutomize and reset buy chooseing
    a different one and go back to the oringal
    for some reason you cannot do this with the browser directly

  15. I have XP/SP3 and have NEVER had so many issues with that computer until IE 8 was installed. I’m fully up to date with all M$ software, security and virus protection and still I get pop-ups and unwanted windows opening. IE crashes happen within seconds on the most common of web site pages.
    Good Bye IE!
    And hopefully by the end of the year Good Riddance to Microsoft!

  16. I have Window EX. While on Facebook it told me that functionality would improve if I upgraded to IE 8. I did and is has practically shut down access to Internet and some executable programs. Email will not funtion (or load completely) IE will not load. Everything takes minutes to switch. I tried using System Restore to get back before IE 8 but that doesn’t load either…Help?

  17. Sorry, Windows XP

  18. Remove Internet Explorer 8 » Carbonized Blog - pingback on September 7, 2009 at 15:24
  19. i tried deleting ie8 and now i cant delete it and cant print oexpress emails and cant even re-install over the top of it. what should i do?

  20. I did not have problem instaqlling IE8 but a lot of problem after installing it.IE8 is very very very slow. I checked all the virus. There is no virus in the computer. I can not go back to IE7 because it is not accepting to go back, once IE8 is installed. I am now using google chrome.

  21. When i open a page like ebay, I click on next page or page two and it reloads page one. everytime. Also randomly it wont let me click send or continue or submit buttons on pages, the cursor changes to the hand but wont do anything. No loading. I reset to default settings and still have an issue, uninstalled and reinstalled, ran AVG 9 and came up with nothing. This problem happens every few pages but if i close internet and reopen it the problems gone for a bit. IE8 on XP pro

  22. FYI… I am so fed up with Microsoft releasing crap-ware that I started using Google Chrome and I will continue using it until Microsoft can fix its own product (IE8).

  23. un-inmunizing spybot did nothing for the slow start-up. In fact I think this is not a good idea regardless, considering that Internet Explorer is a magnet for everything that is bad online. Spybot protection is a must.

    I went back and re-inmunized everything as it was.

    • It worked for me and many others. It doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m now on Windows 7 or because either MS or Spybot changed something. if you are still suffering from a slow start up after deimmunizing everything try reseting IE 8 to it’s default or running it without add ons.

  24. Hello and Help. Please and Thank You.

    A friend of mine just bought a big ‘ol fancy laptop. It’s huge and almost too pretty to use. It’s a Toshiba, if that matters.

    It came with Windows 7 and ie8 already installed. She called me over because she didn’t know how to open her browser (hand to God) and she wanted me to put an icon on her desktop to give her access to her email. Oh, and since she’s blind as a bat, she asked me to make her text larger. Lastly, I installed her copy of Office 2003 which is compatible with Windows 7 (or so Google told me).

    Oh, and I hooked up her printer.

    So having said all that, the problem: When I opened ie, the page takes a little longer than I think it should to open. First, it comes up reduced size and when I enlarge it, it takes a bit for the contents of the window to expand. But then, it just WON’T close. I click the X. I wait. It is unrelenting in its openness. Eventually, I have to shut it down in Task Manager.

    Have I broken her computer with my “help”, or is this a known problem? When I get back over to her house, I’m going to try running ie with no add-ons. I don’t even know if she has any to disable, but I’ll see.

    Do you have any suggestions for me? I’m not tech savvy. I’m only slightly more savvy than she is.

    Oh, and it did seem that at first, when I showed her that she could just click on the e to open her browser, that the page was loading just fine, then. But now – not so much.

    Help?

  25. Carbonize
    I have installed Windows 7 with IE 8 and when I try to login to an htaccess protected folder IE 8 will not login, just keeps popping up the login window, I use Firefox as my main browser and it works fine with firefox, but I need IE for one site. Carb or anyone else run into this problem and if so did you find a fix? Been searching Google but nothing.

  26. I have a security camera that works fine on the computers using XP, on my vista lap top IE8 will not let the active x files install. The company says it is due to a firewall in IE8. the camera works with Firefox but it does not have all the features any help is appreciated.

  27. ie8 totally just shut down my entire internet connection. my computer says http://www.google.ca is not a valid web address, i dont know what it did but I say ie8 is freakin retarded and like everything else microsoft puts out, a piece of trash

  28. Since installing IE8, I finally have gmail looking like it should. The problem is the reply button opens up so tiny. I need the window gmail used to provide when replying to an email. Is anyone else experiencing this and do you have a fix? Thank you!

  29. I have IE8 and no addons installed other then the one that comes with my anti-virus. When I open it, from top to bottom I get the address bar, a black line were the favorites and tools bottons should be, My McAfee bar (anything after the site advisor is my desktop), another black bar were some more bottons should be, and then my tab bar. Anything after any open tabs is black. The rest is good. How do i fix the different bars on the top of the whole thing? Any advice will be tryed. Thank you.

    • OK first thing to try is go to Control Panel (usually in your start menu) and open Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab and at the bottom you will see a button to Reset Internet Explorer settings. Click that and see if that fixes the problem. If not try uninstalling it and then reinstalling it. You will find instructions on how to uninstall it at http://carbonize.co.uk/wp/2009/03/21/remove-ie8/

  30. IE8 installed. now 28 new icons appear on my desktop, such as hs_err_pid ###. What are these? What to do?

  31. “regsvr32 actxprxy.dll”
    whatever this gobbledygook means, it did the trick! Thank you very much

  32. Disabling the java add-on will speedup IE8 tab switching considerably!

  33. Help needed, I have IE8 running with XP (SP2) and every time I try to log on to any website that require user name and password (Ebay, Yahoo mail ect) IE8 detects a fault and reverts back to log on page. Anyone else experienced this or knows of a fix?

  34. My IE8 will not allow me to click on certain buttons or open up new windows for certain websites. I tried resetting the defaults and many other things. Help!!!!!!!!!

  35. Wonderful info&great site.

  36. Tab problem solved, thanks, I previously gave up on this.

  37. jim_vierling

    Hello. IE8 is constantly doing the “this tab has been recovered” thing. It hapeens sometimes when I try to log-in to a site and sometimes it just happens when the site has been open for a hour. Happens times in between as well. Also now I have 2 instances of iexplore.exe showing up in Task Manager at startup of the computer. These were not there before. I recently did a clean install. I have disabled BCU.exe, but it did not help. When I end process the 2 iexplore.exes in task manager the tab has been recovered box appears behind task manager even though I do not have a browser window open? Ending the process also causes IE8 to display the window that says your last browsing ended unexpectedly with the restore or home page options?

  38. jim_vierling

    Oops. I use windows XP SP3.

  39. jim_vierling

    One of the reasons for the clean install was that I was having problems with BSODs. Since I was also having the problems with IE8 I went to add/remove programs in control panel and removed IE8. At which point the computer would no longer even go to the desktop.

  40. Is there some setting in IE 8 or Windows that will allow me to download from an FTP site without the login issue like with the Chrome browser?

  41. Is there some setting in IE 8 or Windows that will allow me to download from an FTP sitei i am not able to find out the login as in the menu file to use my username and password

  42. i’ve got a windows xp sp3 i went through from the cd n found the setup for ie8 and i installed it but a problem occured’ then i canselled it ‘ after that i try too install ie8 it says “iertutill” wasn’t found re-install the application !!!!! please help me ..i fed up using firefox

  43. Hi,

    I have an IE8 and I want to use the “run as” option in it. But I am not able to. Like I right click on it and select “run as”. Enter the id and password but it still starts with the default users credentials only. Is there a solution to this. Any help is much appreciated,

    Thanks

  44. I had to go back to IE7 to get Yahoo Finance to load properly. I could not navigate away from YF and when I closed it I got a warning message that closing may cause damage, do I want to close it anyway. No problems with IE7.

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