I drafted a series of articles about IE8 and its implications for web designers while I was beta testing it. I found quite a lot to like about RC1 and upgraded to the final release as soon as it was available. Now, I am uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 and won't be touching it again until there is a patch out. The final release is nowhere near as stable as the RC1 was. The issues I found include:
- 100% CPU usage;
- accelerators staying active long after I had closed IE;
- Windows XP crashing;
- Settings overwritten - not just the settings I had in RC1, but ClearType, task bar and quick launch were all reset to Microsoft's default;
- Interference with my Logitech mouse;
- Refusing access to my PC's localhost, and not keeping the settings for it, so making local testing impossible.
I had none of these issues with RC1 and after two days of troubleshooting and testing under different systems I have concluded that upgrading from RC1 was a mistake. Some CSS handling also appears to have changed between builds so, for now, I will not be posting the articles I had prepared. Having found that a number of people are experiencing similar problems I think waiting for a patch is prudent.
If you need to uninstall Internet Explorer 8 the instructions are here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700/en-us
Troubleshooting Tips
Uninstalling IE8 was not a painless experience so I thought I would update this post to give you some tips:
- Make sure all programs are closed. This means everything! Don't forget your antivirus or your Logitech apps. Keeping the Logitech setpoint or other mouse controller application running can cause problems.
- Don't be tempted to use the Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs to remove IE8. Start Menu -> Run -> Appwiz.cpl will bring up the Application Wizard without loading anything superfluous.
- Once you have the Appwiz screen up, check the "Show Updates" checkbox. Look for any Internet Explorer Updates under Windows Live and remove these before you attempt to remove IE8.
- After you have removed IE8 and rebooted your machine, check that your old version of IE has been correctly reinstalled. If you are on Windows XP, IE8 replaces itself with Internet Explorer 7, even if the last installed IE was IE6 (which it was in my case).
- After you uninstall Internet Explorer 8, you may notice Application event log errors after each reboot. To resolve this problem, delete the following Internet Explorer User Accelerators and Internet Explorer Machine Accelerators registry keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions:
{7B849a69-220F-451E-B3FE-2CB811AF94AE} {CF7639F3-ABA2-41DB-97F2-81E2C5DBFC5D} - If you are not confident in messing about with your registry, the link I gave above has a button to Microsoft "Fix It". This downloads and installs a Microsoft app that will remove IE8 and the registry entries in one go.
I hope you find these tips useful.
Have you experienced any problems with Internet Explorer 8?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or jump to the comment form to add your thoughts }
i am also getting this issue, that my local host is unable to access. it block and says that unsafe website.
i am also going to uninstall IE 8.
hi,
in IE8 i m trying to open my screen , instead of showing the true screen it displays source code..but same screen is working fine in IE7 and IE6 .
have tried meta tag also
but not helpfull , after trying meta , it show this page cannot be displayed.
please help , if u have some option for the problem
@ankita:
That's a strange problem but it sounds like your page may not be sending the correct HTTP response headers. Download this tool: http://blunck.se/iehttpheaders/iehttpheaders.html and use it to show the HTTP headers.
Look at the Content-Type and make sure it is set to the same Content-Type of your page.
HTML and XHTML documents, for example, should be delivered with Content-Type: text/html.
Note: This isn't a browser bug. Browsers are designed to deliver content in the format that is set in the HTTP header. If your Content-Type is not returning the correct one for your page and you don't know how to fix this you may find information on the Microsoft Internet Explorer knowledge bases or forums.
Good luck!
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