How widespread are recent IE6 problems?

  • Thread starter Thread starter BC
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B

BC

Hi

I've noticed a big upsurge in Internet Explorer connected
problems among my clients in recent months, and it seems
to be all connected with IE6, regardless of which Windows
version it's on -- Win98/2K/Xp. The original IE 5.0 was
relatively troublefree, and 5.5 had its security-related
glitches, but 6.0 has been a major hassle. Not so much in
a direct browser-related way, more in terms of disabling
Outlook and IE-codependent programs like UPS WorldShip
(what was USP thinking?), causing general flakiness on the
PC, and in the current case I'm working on as I type this,
disabling all system shortcut links in an XP notebook. We
all know that IE was artificially tied into Windows, and
this is a consequence of that, but I'm just wondering how
widespread are these issues, particularly with 6.0. Any
feedback postings would be appreciated.

-BC
 
hardhead said:
think everybody knows now, wish i had 5.5
Click to expand...


I've now had to troubleshoot IE6 problems two days in a
row, on two different PC's at two different clients,
very different symptoms, but for the same reason -- some
parasitic spyware programs had attached themselves to IE,
somehow causing all sorts of problems. Yesterday it was on
an WinXP notebook and none of the system icons would do
anything (My Computer, My Network Places, and such);
today it was on a Win2K desktop and Outlook 2K would close
down without an error message a couple of seconds after
starting up.

For the first I ran a sequence of F-Prot, Ad-Aware and
Spybot Search and Destroy. Yesterday's notebook hadn't
updated its antivirus since December and had some "backdoor"
trojans loaded on it, but removing them did nothing.
Running the IE6 SP1 update also failed, as did some
Microsoft recommended tricks. System restore did nothing,
but after running both Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D, things
finally became normal. I think Spybot helped the most
since it's extra good at removing IE-specific spyware.

This morning's problem was fixed with just Spybot. I
noticed right away a new IE tool bar called "Search Bar"
which I assumed was spyware, although it did allow a
normal uninstall. Spybot caught a pile of other
programs, some requiring a reboot before Spybot could
purge them. Outlook was then able to start up with a
new profile, although an old profile would cause a bunch
of blank buttons to appear at the bottom of the screen
before Outlook would crash. @&*$!% Microsoft and their
tying in of apps in such a half-assed, fragile way.

I've been trying to get my clients to use Mozilla Firefox
as their default browser, which is actually finally a
fast, mature product, but bad habits die slowly. It
doesn't help that products like Peachtree, Quickbooks
and UPS WorldShip require IE for absolutely no good
friggin reason, except, I assume, as part of some
stupid marketing arrangement with Microsoft. One time
a client had applied some critical security patches and
updates to IE 5.5, only to have their Peachtree Complete
Accounting software start to act flakey. It turned out
that the version of Peachtree they got would only work
with the version of IE that came on the installation
CD -- any updates or patches would screw things up,
including going to IE6. !!! Since some of the patches
weren't removable, I had to remove 5.5, put in 5.0, and
then reinstall 5.5 from the Peachtree CD.

Anyway, that's some FYI from my end.

-BC
 
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