To disable it in the browser go to Internet options by either clicking the gear cog on the right hand side of IE9s toolbar or go to your control panel. Once open click on the Advanced tab. The very first option is Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering* so tick that. You will then have to restart IE9. Hopefully Zuma Blitz will be a bit more tolerable now.

To disable it in Flash simply go to a web page that has Flash in it and right click on the flash. From the menu that appears select Settings… and then deselect the Enable hardware acceleration option.

So first try disabling one. If that doesn’t work re-enable the one you disabled and disable the other one. If it’s still jerky try disabling them both.

If all else fails you can always just uninstall IE9 and go back to IE8 or try one of the other browsers such as Firefox, Chrome or Opera.

Microsoft has made it’s own range of tests that you can run and they can be found at the IE9 test drive site. It’s good to see how your current browser handles these tests as well.

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So why keep using it? There are plenty of excellent alternatives these days. Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Flock and you could even use Apple’s Safari although it uses a stupid amount of memory on Windows.

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Personally I can’t see many manufacturers not including Internet Explorer since it’s what most people are used to and there are still a few sites, such as some banks etc, that stil wont let you log in with anything but IE or, for some god forsaken reason, Netscape.

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My main gripe at the moment is sites that require you to have cookies enabled but have terrible code in place for if you don’t.

A good example is Game who put you in to an infinite redirect loop if you have cookies disabled. In fact you have to enable cookies on their site to see the page that tells you that you needs cookies enabled to view the site

Another bad one I just found, and this one is really really bad, is download.com. You don’t need cookies to view the site but if you have them disabled and click through to view a programs page your browsers memory usage goes through the roof. I tested this in Firefox 3.1 b3, IE8 and Chrome. With all three browsers I had to use task manager to close them thanks to download.com’s sloppy web code.

So please, if you are going to write a site that requires that visitors accept cookies, make sure you have good code in place to handle people like me who have cookies disabled.

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.

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.