Internet Explorer Stop Working
Posted on February 22, 2014
I recently ran in to an issue with Internet Explorer not working. When Internet Explorer started the page was blank. No toolbars, no web address, just a blue box with a blank page. There where no errors, such as a 404 or limited or no internet connectivity. I searched for a solution and even gave the Microsoft FixIt program a go. After a few hours I still had not resolved the issue. While I am sure there are many different reason why Internet Explorer will fail these are the steps that I took to solve this issue.
- Run a full and complete virus scan. This may turn up some malware or trojans. If it does see if it fixed the issue.
- Check the startup list for anything unusual. You can get there by typing msconfig in the run box or hit the windows key and the r key to bring up a run box. When looking at the start-up items feel free to uncheck anything that you do not know. You can uncheck all items if you want. In my case this did not help. Then restart and check for the issue.
- Next try to start Internet Explorer with no add-ons. If Internet Explorer works with no adds-on you can safely assume the issue is with one or more of the add-on. This was indeed my issue.
Internet Explorer add-ons seems to be the source of many problems lately. When you start Internet Explorer with no add-ons you will have the option to manage add-on. This would be a good time to check them out. I tend to disable anything that is not mainstream or the publisher id is “not available” or “not verified”. I will leave add-on such as flash, adobe, java and things that I know I use frequently. Then close out the Internet Explorer with no add-on and start-up the standard Internet Explorer and see if it works. Unfortunately this did not solve the problem.
The next step is to start disabling blocks odd-on. If you click on the publish at the top of the list you can disable all. In my case there where many, so I disabled one publisher at a time and checked to see if that was the issue. After I disabled ever group of add-ons Internet Explorer worked. The next step was to start enabling the add-ons to see if I could find the one that was causing the issue. What I found was that many of the add-ons disappeared when I enabled blacks of add-on. As it turns out there where 6 or 7 add-on that vanished one or two from each group of “known” publishers. This leads me to believe that there could have been some other issues with add-on trying to update and not clearing out the old add-on. When they where disabled then enabled only the valid add-ons where available.
There you have it. A pretty simple fix, of course you always can just use Chrome or Firefox. I feel both are safer, faster and more reliable than Internet Explorer.