I have IE 7 set with Google News at my home page. When I open it, the page sometimes loads but completely locks up the browser.
One time I managed to get Tools to open and that allowed me to try changing my default home page. That helped, but any visit to Google News locked me up again.
Of course, I suspected malware and threw Spybot, Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, and Norton Antivirus at it. Except for the latter, they claimed to have found suspicious entries, quarantined, and deleted them.
Firefox was running better but slowly and the more I used it the slower I got. I followed instruction to get of zfsearch.com and upgraded to 3.0.7 and that now seems to be fine.
Any suggestions for IE? (And, yes, I want to continue using it.)
My guess would be a third-party extension that might not be spyware or malicious, but is still causing issues. In Internet Options on the Advanced tab, try unchecking “Enable third party browser extensions”. Restart IE and if it no longer locks up, then you can disable the individual extensions one by one until you find the offending one.
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve had this happen repeatedly over the past two months on both my XP laptop that rarely is used to download anything and my Vista desktop. All I’ve been able to learn is that the problem is wide-spread and frequently reported without solution on tech boards which seems to suggest a problem with IE 7 itself, rather than individual computers.
I found the workaround that allows one to open IE commands without entering the browser. I went in and did a reset.
Everything now works - unless I try going to Google News. It then locks up just as it had before. Other Google sites do work and the toolbar loaded and works, except for the news icon.
A search on Google News specifically locking up IE on XP didn’t produce anything usable.
This really annoys me since I had a large number of customized searches on Google News that I relied on. I’ve replicated them in Firefox, but I prefer the look of IE.
Do you have the phishing filter enabled? Slows the hell out of IE in my experience and is of no tangible benefit if you’re smart enough not to click on things like “Anna Kournikova loves you! Click here for nude pictures!!”
Anyhow, I would try disabling it and see if that helps.
So far, the only workaround that has done me any good is: disable the Adobe Flash extension. With my computer (Vista), the freezing browser problem goes away 100% of the time that the flash/shockwave extension is disabled; when I re-enable the extension (when a website requires it, usually), the freezeups start again within hours if not minutes.
Apparently/supposedly:
the problem affects Vista, XP, and to a much lesser degree, Firefox;
the glitch appeared after either an Adobe Flash update in mid-fall '08, or an MS Vista update at the same time, or both.
Bumping because for a while everything worked, including using Google News as my home page.
Today that stopped and opening the browser locks it.
I need that command to enter into the run box that opens the IE tools menu without opening IE so I can go in and change the home page, but I can’t find it now.
Other than disabling add-ins and updating the ones you use (flash, etc) you should uninstall any toolbars that you dont use and really should only have one at the most. Preferably zero.
