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Main Area and Open Discussion => General Software Discussion => Topic started by: mouser on October 21, 2006, 07:43 AM
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Two New Internet Explorer 7 Reviews:
One From Read/Writeweb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_explorer7_review.php
IE 7 is a huge improvement over IE 6. There is evidence of really good effort and innovation here - but there are also traces of the old IE that just do not fit. It seems like the IE team was pressured to release the tool (because of what Firefox is bringing out) before they had a chance to rethink and redo everything. Hopefully the shortcomings will be cleaned up in IE 8 - and that we won't have to wait another five years before it comes out!
The bigger question is how does IE7 compare to Firefox 2.0 and is it enough to hang on to IE's huge market share? This is a tough question to answer... but in terms of performance, cohesiveness of features and availability of add-ons - Firefox 2.0 is in better shape right now.
And one from WinSuperSite: http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/ie7.asp
Internet Explorer 7 is an absolute no-brainer: If you use Windows, you should almost certainly upgrade immediately: IE 7's security features are top-notch and its functional improvements are nicely designed and greatly appreciated. For the short term, certain people may run into occasional Web site compatibility issues with IE 7, but I think those problems will fade quickly. Certainly, most major Web sites have already been upgraded to work correctly with Microsoft's latest Web browser. I've had a field day in the past making fun of IE, but with IE 7, the browser has finally turned the corner. This is one product that Microsoft should be quite proud of. My only question, really, is what took them so long? Seriously, download it now. Highly recommended.
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I upgraded to IE 7 today. First time I saw IE7 ever. Never bothered to get a beta or read a review.
Well, nice. They changed the layout.
Started Slimbrowser to see if it's still working. It is. No need to use IE7. It's just a security update for me. The options window is different, but that's the only change I see (now).
but in terms of performance, cohesiveness of features and availability of add-ons - Firefox 2.0 is in better shape right now.
Why is every person acting like there's no frontend for IE (like Maxthon, Slimbrowser, and so on)? They're working with IE7, bring in tons of features and offer great performance (because of IE). I know Firefox fanboys will rip IE7 apart and tell the world how unsafe it is... but I don't care. I just hope these sites with a super-annoying "You're using IE! Microsoft is the devil! Use Firefox now and save the free world!" pop-ups will stop doing so (like the one at www.workrave.com).
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Why is every person acting like there is no stable, not memory eating, extensions for Firefox? Goes both ways wr975. Wait for the world to see the light 8) You are a pioneer so must be brave.
Anyway, the world still use IE6 or IE7 and will continue to do so. Except a few sites most of these crusade pics you will see where may be 50-75% already use Firefox. They make their use of internet into a big personal deal and so have chosen Firefox. Also some have hated IE6 with a passion and not just for security reasons. MS them self say it more or less directly in this presentation of IE7 http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=246705 Easy to admit IE6 was poorly maintained, showing its age, laughing at strange relations to web standards now they offer IE7 8) At some point they are praising TAB Browsing!! How they try to get rid of old habits etc. May be IE7 would have come out sooner if MS people had a broader view of what is possible. These people seem completely unaware of Maxthon, Firefox, Opera, even the terrible tabs from MSN seachbar - they live in MS land of course. No reason to love them though, may be something else...
You will like what they say, "Back with a vengeance", will not leave it at IE7. More frequent updates, supported now, helping web development highest priority.
Actually I think it will be hard for some Firefox users to swallow they no longer can sing the old song of "safer". I assume and believe that is the case. MS hate will still be strong as ever but does not sell that many tickets - may be they will just focus on own strengths, Firefox 3.0 is being baked.
Signed up for Maxthon 2.0?, not close to being done yet but looks very nice. Just noticed it says close to 70 million downloads on Maxthon site. Add Avantbrowser, Slimbrowser etc. and there is a crowd!
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Well, I'm off to finally upgrade to IE7 now. I'm hoping that it really lives up to what I've heard about it.
The thing that I think I'm most looking forward to is seeing IE7 kick FF's butt and shut the "IE is insecure" crowd up. The reporting on security issues has been so horribly lobsided that I'm sick and tired of hearing the anti-MS crowd chanting their mindless mantras. And most if it basically comes from the FOSS/OSS or Apple camps.
If nothing else, I'd just like to hear some more intelligent reporting. I'm hoping IE7 helps push things towards that. I'l start my mantra now, "Let's have some balanced and honest reporting... Let's have some balanced and honest reporting... Let's have some balanced and honest reporting... "
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AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! If I had some DCredits to give out, you'd get them renegade!
I too am tired of the "IE is so insecure" bs. Put any other browser in IE's spot, and I guarantee we would see the tables turn. Market share is proprtionally related to the number and frequency of exploits found. If only the FF crowd could learn this.;
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I'm happily an Opera user. There are many happy Firefox users. There are also happy IE users. The bottom line: to each his own.
In my personal opinion, IE7 is a much better application than IE6 -- it's usable. So for those using IE, they're better off than they were. Developers who sniff and or develop for only certain browsers are only antagonizing the issue. Save for fringe things -- plugins, very new protocols, etc. -- all the major browsers are capable of rendering most of the same webstuff. Find the features/interface/etc. you like and there's your browser.
Most of Internet Explorer's insecurity stems as inheretence from it being the most commonly used browser. All browsers have their holes--but the software with the bigger user share gets the most focus on finding and exploiting holes.
IE7 won't tear me away from Opera, but it sure did replace IE6 on my system. :)
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Well, so far so good. I like a lot of what I'm seeing in IE7, but I'm not liking the lack of mouse gestures.
Does anyone know of a decent add-in for IE7 that does mouse gestures? I do miss that a lot.
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http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/essentials.asp have something. Site made by one of the guys in the video btw. Or use Strokeit. Works in all browsers :D Under "Tweaks" you can find the old speed trick he talks about.
Yep, it is a nice browser and hopefully it will help fix those pages not rendering properly in Firefox, Opera - thanks to old IE6/MS code. There are more than a few of those. Most visited sites not big problem of course but try dig into a business directory in a small country and you will see strange things. With commitment to standards general internet browsing will eventually get better. IE7 also important to Firefox users.
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Hi Renegade (how's Seoul treating you?),
It's a bit more drastic (or perhaps less, depending on your viewpoint), but you could install Maxthon (http://www.maxthon.com), which comes with mouse gestures built-in and they work brilliantly. The developer is working on Maxthon 2.0, which promises to be a big step forward, but the latest build is very solid and very capable.
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Hello Darwin,
Well, Seoul is still Seoul. Good and bad. But things are pretty good everything considered. I was out with a friend a few times as his life went from mere "train wreck" to "World Trade Center". Yep. Bad beyond comprehension. So in light of that, man... Things are hunkey-dorey here for me! :D
But really, Seoul is a good place to be.
Does Maxthon use shodocvw.dll and MSHTML.tlb? (I thought it did. Need to double check though.) Or if I install it will it still use Trident? (That's the IE core.) If I do try it, I'd like to be still using the IE7 core.
I installed http://www.ysgyfarnog.co.uk/utilities/mousegestures/ (http://www.ysgyfarnog.co.uk/utilities/mousegestures/) and so far it seems ok, but I've only used it like 5x or so.
But on the IE topic, I just releasea a mini-app (http://renegademinds.com/Default.aspx?tabid=70) that I created for myself that uses IE automation, and things went perfectly smooth once IE7 was installed. Couldn't be happier on that front. No additional coding required. I'll post details in the appropriate place for that though once I have time. (It's 1am now :P )
Cheers!
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Ok. I'm sold on IE7. It's getting regular usage from now on.
Check the memory footprint. It's WAY lower than Firefox. Massively! At the moment I'd expect to use about 150MB or so in FF, but IE7 had me clocking in at a cool 30~50MB of memory used!
Nice!
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i just posted about your tool renegade: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=5894
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Ok. I'm sold on IE7. It's getting regular usage from now on.
Check the memory footprint. It's WAY lower than Firefox. Massively! At the moment I'd expect to use about 150MB or so in FF, but IE7 had me clocking in at a cool 30~50MB of memory used!
Nice!
-Renegade
Unfair comarison - most of the IE libraries are incoroporated in Windows and so are already loaded with IExplore.EXE ... but having said that they are still loaded even if you don't use IE so I suppose there is an effective memory saving.
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Thanks for the balanced and honest report Renegade 8) Judging by some Firefox complaints there will be more.
Same type of confirmation here http://www.lifehacker.com/software/ie7/ie7-vs-firefox-2-the-memory-usage-showdown-208908.php
I cannot confirm but have always been unlucky when comparing memory usage between browsers. Always end up concluding difference is not worth the hassle of testing somewhat properly, like taking caching or special resource consuming features like Undo/prefetching into account. Have never seen anything like 100-300% difference when conditions are attempted similar = not singing "Take back the web" hit or mumbling "Feature not a bug my xxx". Modern browsers have potential to eat lots of ram which is good. Different behavoir in how.
Try http://www.eyeball-series.org/ for high IE7/Firefox/Opera numbers :D
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How is it NOT fair? Opera starts up just as fast as IE6, IE7 and FF while uses far less memory. Note, YMMV, but that seems to be a general consensus amongst various forums and web sites.
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If you like the Menu Bar on top (and I'm sure you will) try this reg tweak provided by MajorGeeks. :Thmbsup:
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How is it NOT fair? Opera starts up just as fast as IE6, IE7 and FF while uses far less memory. Note, YMMV, but that seems to be a general consensus amongst various forums and web sites.
-Josh
Simple I wasn't taking about Opera and neither was Renegade ?
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Well, if it works for one browser...shouldnt it for all browsers? I am not an opera fanatic, mind you, I do use IE7 now as I want to test it for a month or two (as it seems very promising AND I FINALLY GET BACK ROBOFORM!!!!!!!), but I do think that the standard works just as well for one browser as it does when comparing it to another.
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I'm with you on the Roboform issue, Josh. It's a deal breaker for me with Opera. I have Opera installed but rarely use it because I am that dependent on Roboform...
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Carol: I use xPlorer^2 and BlackBox, so I shouldn't have much of the IE-specific stuff preloaded... yet IExplorer is a LOT faster than FireFox in terms of startup time. If you count second-time launches, when stuff is in the filesystem cache, IE is still noticably faster to start then FF. Opera is a bit slower than IE, but a bunch faster than FF.
Yeah, I do have some extensions loaded in FF, to make it usable - but even a vanilla FF is sluggish (1.5.0.7, not going to install a RC on my main box).
Yet I still use FF... it still has fewer exploits than IE, and because it's not in as much use as IE is, fewer sites also target FF. And even though things like Avant and Maxthon make IE more ustable, I still find FF + extensions are better. YMMV. I'd use Opera if there weren't those few annoying things I can't entirely put my finger on...
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I admit I love the new IE7 interface and tabs, and am looking forward to Maxthon 2. But like Allen, I spend a lot of time with Opera now that I'm learning its full customizability, e.g., you can combine more than one command into one keyboard shortcut. And like Allen, I'm neutral on browsers: just use what you love, as long as they serve up sites and you can tolerate each one's faults and quirks, it's all good.
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I had a client that installed IE 7 Beta awhile back. Knocked out a software tool that used IE framework. He tried uninstalled but couldn't do it.
I guess there was a 39 step manual regedit method to uninstall, but once the site-tech had done that, he couldn't get IE 6 back on -- it would just say newer IE 7 is on and would repair the install (!!!!). Eventually his PC HD got imaged!
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I had a client that installed IE 7 Beta awhile back.
-REkz
And you didn't fire him as a client? :P
Man, there are pieces of beta software that you just don't mess with. IE is one of them. Other good examples of beta software that nobody should ever tough include disk imaging software, backup solutions, partitioning software, etc. On a test box, sure, but man... I'd be way too scared to try something like those even inside of a virtual machine.
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Carol: I use xPlorer^2 and BlackBox, so I shouldn't have much of the IE-specific stuff preloaded... yet IExplorer is a LOT faster than FireFox in terms of startup time. If you count second-time launches, when stuff is in the filesystem cache, IE is still noticably faster to start then FF. Opera is a bit slower than IE, but a bunch faster than FF.
Yeah, I do have some extensions loaded in FF, to make it usable - but even a vanilla FF is sluggish (1.5.0.7, not going to install a RC on my main box).
Yet I still use FF... it still has fewer exploits than IE, and because it's not in as much use as IE is, fewer sites also target FF. And even though things like Avant and Maxthon make IE more ustable, I still find FF + extensions are better. YMMV. I'd use Opera if there weren't those few annoying things I can't entirely put my finger on...
-f0dder
When you say "xPlorer^2 and BlackBox" does that mean you have uninstalled all Internet Explorer and Explorer components from Windows ? AS I understand it most of the components for IE are so deeply embedded in Windows that they are loaded whether you use IE or Explorer or not. Any uninstall of IE is only really superficial and doesn't remove all the components. It is therefore not surprising that IE is quicker to load than FF (mine is too) but you have to take into account that most of IE is already loaded during the startup sequence. If you use a plugin to minimise FF to the system tray (effectively what IE does invisibly) then FF would load pretty quickly. Try https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2110/
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Nope, haven't removed the IE and Explorer components - it would be pretty hard to do in the first place, and a lot of other apps would break. I still doubt that the IE-specific controls (like the html rendering) are loaded automatically, but I'd have to do a little more research.
Of course there are controls, the so-called "common controls" ("un"common in the way you program them, by the way ;)) that were originally introduced with IE - I'm not taking them into consideration though, since just about every software these days use them.
If you use a plugin to minimise FF to the system tray (effectively what IE does invisibly) then FF would load pretty quickly.
Actually no - the FF plugin just keeps FF minimized, whereas with IE the process terminates. If you load the browser again right away, it's executables and DLLs will be in the filesystem cache and thus won't have to get loaded from disk... but FF is still a lot heavier to load. This is not because of IE "cheating", but because FF is pretty amazingly bloated.
At any rate, Opera loads almost as fast as IE, where FF is ridiculously slow.
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I think you are missing the point - most of IE is loaded into memory all the time - that's why you can view help pages (in a lot of applications which rely on MSHTML) and webpages in a lot of applications which just hook directly to the IE code. For exampl if you use Microsoft Office applications (esp. 2003) it uses the IE rendering engine to view all of the help pages etc. and you can browse the internet within the Outlook application (there is even a web toolbar) - the only difference in Outlook is that it defaults to a more secure zone than IE.
When you load IE specifically it is really only loading a frontend (just like Maxthon etc) onto code that is already in memory. The fact that it isn't list as such in the task lists doesn't mean it isn't there!
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HtmlHelp is loaded on-demand - so just starting an app that uses HH for help doesn't get the HtmlHelp code loaded automatically, before you actually use the help functionality.
I think I'm gonna make a little program that enumerates which DLL files are loaded in memory, would be a fun little project and might show some interesting results as well...
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Firefox has never been quick to load - even fanboys say that :D Should be a bit improved with 2.0 they say. The usual advice when people complain about this is to limit extension pack, clear history, downloads. Sometimes too many Live bookmarks can tease as well. Matter of few seconds on fast computer no matter what - dont think it can be an issue for average computer unless there really is a problem. I have 2.5mb bookmark files, mile long history, changed GUI, many extensions, plugins and would not call it slow, not fast either ;) A clean/empty profile will be fast. May be not much to do until they transform all bookmarks, history into sqlite format.
If I remember correctly the pre-loader thingy for Firefox is not without problems, not sure - might have been fixed. Look it up at Mozillazine if it feels wrong.
2.0 is out tomorrow btw. RC3 is same as Final, same procedure as before. Available now it seems ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0 or http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0/
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What I still dont understand is how firefox can be so slow at startup and use so much memory when opera has managed to be fast to start and use less memory on ALL PLATFORMS (Windows, *nix, BSD, Solaris, HP-UX). As I said above, the whole "IE is preloaded" argument doesnt hold any water anymore. Its been disproven time and time again. Opera has managed to start as fast, if not faster, than IE on the windows platform. Why firefox has not optimized its code is beyond me. Bugs that have existed in the firefox browser since .1, are still existent and dont show any signs of being fixed. That doesnt inspire much confidence in a browser to me. Anyways, I am on maxthon now with IE7. Works great, fast, and all my plugins and addons work.
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Yeah, the efficiency and resource use issues of Firefox have always really bugged me. Sure I have 3GB of RAM, but my browser shouldn't have to use 200MB of it. :P The cross-platform argument really doesn't hold water, as you said - Opera is on at least as many platforms as Firefox and it's low resource using on all of them, *and* it has a bundled email client (and now bittorrent support, etc.).
- Oshyan
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2.0 is out tomorrow btw. RC3 is same as Final, same procedure as before. Available now it seems ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0 or http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0/
-dk70
Yep 2.0 is available now and it seems to work fine.
Breaks quite a few extensions though but overriding compatability checking meant all my extensions worked fine except for RoboForm - but there is a FF2.0RC Roboform extension on the roboform website (update in FF does not find it).
They have changed the name of 'extensions' to 'add-ons' - which made me double-take in the tools menu for a while! Why ?
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I have reverted to IE 6 SP2 - since I installed IE 7 I have been experiencing random reboots and system freezes (necessitating the use of the reset button). Anyone else experienced anything like this?
It may be a coincidence - time will tell, but at least as far as I can tell the roll back to IE 6 seems to have worked OK.
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I've been trying to remember why I was under the impression I didn't want to install Internet Explorer 7. Perhaps because I think it was said to depend on the Windows Genuine Advantage - that's the thing that kills your Windows installation if it suspects it isn't genuine - or else it might have been something about DRM. Or just a change in the licensing - they get to scan your hard disk for programs that they don't like, such as if they decide that Linux violates Microsoft patents on FAT disk format then they unilaterally delete -that- for you. But anyway, I have a definite impression they were going to pull -something- on us here - I just don't recall what.
I have been deliberately avoiding WGA since it started showing up disguised as a critical security update to Windows. I guess that it will eventually become compulsory, both with Vista when you can't get XP any more and your hardware dies, and before then probably there'll be the Sucker-2007 virus and before Microsoft will allow you to patch the bug that it uses, you must install WGA. But for now I'm a rebel. I'm not planning on becoming an outlaw, but, y'know, live free or die.
I suppose I could buy a Mac. I actually can afford one.
I'm also a very happy Opera user. I even paid for it.
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dk70: since I tend to close and re-open my browser, "a few seconds" means a whole lot to me - and my computer isn't exactly sluggish :). And it's a bit silly when people say "omfg n00b just cut down on the extensions then", since FF sucks without extensions. (And even without any extensions, it's still noticably slower to load than both IE and Opera).
About FireFox use... it does seem to use suboptimal data structures. Try loading a complex website (or a "malformed" one, like what the picture->html converters produce). That should of course be fixed. But on the other hand, I don't think it's wrong to use a bunch of ram for aggressive caching and history - I personally like snapback tab and it's speed a lot. But don't kid yourselves, a big part of the memory bloat of FF is because, well, suboptimal code.
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I only found out few days ago but those 2-3 extensions allowing non compatible installations are not really needed. Look for extensions.checkCompatibility in about:config set it to false. May be what you meant. If extension maker have not updated yet or show no activity look for alternative.
Well, I doubt you have a more "dirty" Firefox than mine and it never use 200mb unless there is media involved. Be careful with numbers, look for reasons if "high memory usage" alarm goes off. 6-7 tabs of Eyeball pics and you are up to may be 350mb - minimize oops down to 1x mb. How it goes, takes 1 second at most. Not like Firefox has stolen memory for good. If you only close tabs, compare Firefox with Opera/IE7 and you see big difference. Goes for all pages I think, still not stealing but it does not want to let go easy and always takes a long time. So level is high because of crap code or because it is aggressive by nature when using memory? Both? For example default setup will not page out memory by minimizing (speed is top priority not low memory usage), opposite most other software.
I also use a lighter Firefox edition on a computer 1/4 as powerful as this one. Dont think Ive ever seen 100+mb, more like 50-60mb with a handful of tabs. Those numbers say nothing other than you have to know conditions in details. That Lifehacker "test" and most complaints shows the same. Only interesting is extensions and pages visited. Numbers alone dont say much. I dont know if you expect 10mb or something but lets say 50-75mb on a 512mb then? I find that reasonable and only notice because I monitor it. If I can run Firefox for as long as I please with no slowdowns or lockups then I dont think a (other browser)79mb vs (Firefox)102mb is something to cry about - should that be the case. I dont use Firefox because it use less memory than the other 2. Sure developers get lazy if no complaints and sure they are not done with optimization. Take a look at Bugzilla. Im not saying Opera does not use less memory in general but that you cant make direct comparisons from what is seen at a certain moment - which is what most do. Im also saying I dont buy the diesel tractor image some paint, heh - or that 200+mb is something you have to live with. There will be reasons or Mozilla close shop tomorrow. FF by itself is a hog? That is an oppinion about what is too much again but still does not change the fact most complaints in this area can be explained and fixed. As with MSN tab browsing or the old Adblock for Firefox it only take 1 bad add-on to change situation.
The way things goes there was never a chance to get a 100% perfect 2.0 much the same way as 1.5.x.x would never be perfect. They move on when they consider code stable. Just the way it is. Would be nice with a cleanup/maintaince/tuning 2.1 version with zero new gadgets but you wont get it. Ive seen that suggested even on Mozillazine. For each X version they should make 1 cleanup version. But, you think that would solve your problems? May be 3.0 will be less "who cares" about reclaiming used memory. They already lowered cache defaults in 2.0. Easy trick, but 1.5.x.x defaults were also quite high.
A clean Firefox on a not sluggish computer takes forever? You have timed it? Well ok, annoying if you have to restart over and over. If that annoying you will stop doing that :D or use other browser. I imagine this could drive some crazy and others will shake head, Im in last category but also have Firefox open for hours and hours, can even be days - cant break it ;) I have same relation to XP bootup time. Im not completely satisfied with Firefox either but cant have it all. If it was strangely unstable as some dev. builds have been I would scream but memory usage bahhh, under control 8) I know exactly how an unstable Firefox feels, often connected with high cpu/memory usage. Unacceptable of course. Solve problem or get rid of it.
Btw, are you restarting Firefox for a particular reason? Cant stand to look at high numbers? Use Auto Reset Browser Extension http://extensions.hesslow.se/extension/1/Auto+Reset+Browser/ For the very interested, heh. Works on 2.0 and does what it says.
Much Firefox/Opera on a thread about IE7!
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For comparison I opened FF2 and IE7 with the same set of 5 webpages in tabs.
FF2 took 81Mb of memory (and worked fine)
IE7 was up to 65Mb (and hadn't finished opening pages when it froze my machine).
I don't think that FF2 looks too bad alongside IE given that there is probably at least 15Mb of IE in memory before you click on the IE icon. FF2 also feels quicker to load to me too than FF1 - but still slower than IE.
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I tried a clean profile for once, I would estiamate startup time to be about 2 seconds, maybe 1.xxxxxx :) You could put Firefox on a ramdisk perhaps? Tell it to save bookmarks, cookies, forms on hd and it should work ok as permanent solution. Will have to do some boot magic but there are guides for this.
Try this strange page for a Firefox extension http://www.rjonna.com/ext/gspace.php simple but eats 90mb and I think 30mb on IE7. Dont know about Opera. Buggy page or what is going on. Hard if not impossible to set up fixed comparison, best to live with monitor tool for a while doing same browser patterns to get a "feel". Have to look out for the odd page.
Remember to disable session/undo feature of Opera/Firefox when comparing to IE7 - or better install such an add-on for it. Then you will not see exact same numbers. Other things to be aware of I think would be phishing filter. Active vs passive vs disabled. Opera has none yet.
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dk70: 2 seconds (or "counting to two") is a loooong time for me - and about the time FF takes to load. With IE6, I can't even count to 1. Of course the comparison is not entirely fair, since IE6 is pretty Vanilla... But Maxthon loads just as fast, and has a lot of the features the FF brings. And this is second-time launches, when program code is in filesystem cache.
Why do I close my browser? Well, when I don't use it, I dont' see any reason it should take up screen space, nor a place in the task bar or a little icon in the tray. Nor sit in memory, for that matter. Perhaps somewhat of a pedantic thing.
The sluggish load time of FF is just one of those small annoyances - not something I'm going to bother setting up a ramdisk to solve - and sure is a smaller annoyance than the much-more-often-targetted exploits in IE >_<
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Minimize trick must always lower memory to 10-15mb. If machine is not sluggish it probably have 1gb or more so little price to pay. May be you have a tool which can hide minimized window and pop it up with hotkey/mouse gesture.
I see why you dont like ATI .net drivers now 8)
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2gig ram, amd64x2 4400+, 2x160gb maxtor sata disks in mirror (not the fastest disks these days, but not shabby either). KAV6 with on-demand scanning. Launching something that should be "small" or "trivial" (like display driver config or a humble web browser) should be done in less than one second, otherwise it annoys me.
Certainly isn't the case with ATI .net driver panel, nvidias panel (even the "old" one), firefox...
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I have been deliberately avoiding WGA since it started showing up disguised as a critical security update to Windows.-Robert Carnegie
Let me correct myself - "important" update, apparently. The rest stands. The primary function of WGA is to deny, from time to time, access to some or all functions of software for the privilege of using which I have paid in full according to Microsoft's own terms, it -has- gone wrong for other legitimate users and closed them down, and allowing it to run is like playing "Russian Roulette". On a bad day it's like the "real" Russian Roulette (which I think was fictional to begin with, I think I read about it someplace) where you load five bullets in six chambers of a revolver.
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I have reverted to IE 6 SP2 - since I installed IE 7 I have been experiencing random reboots and system freezes (necessitating the use of the reset button). Anyone else experienced anything like this?
It may be a coincidence - time will tell, but at least as far as I can tell the roll back to IE 6 seems to have worked OK.
-Carol Haynes
Follow up - I haven't had a single freeze or random reboot since removing IE 7 ....
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Just a note, I havent had a single freeze or lockup since INSTALLING IE7. Been running very smooth and IE works a lot better for me.
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I think I spoke too soon ....
Must be a conflict or corruption of some sort!
Anyone any idea how to troubleshoot freezes and random reboots that give no log entries in the Event Viewer ?
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@carol
One thing would be to go in control panel / system and disable the automatic reboot, so you see the blue screen.
Freezes are pretty nasty. They're usually hardware related. Get the Ultimate Boot CD and use it to check your memory / hard disk(s).
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Yes, run Memtest86. Will probably fail fast if memory is faulty. XP can be forgiving about memory errors, not all programs are.
Could be dying power supply, motherboard - guessing. Remember to run sfc /scannow. Is there a repair IE component hidden somewhere?
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@carol
One thing would be to go in control panel / system and disable the automatic reboot, so you see the blue screen.
Freezes are pretty nasty. They're usually hardware related. Get the Ultimate Boot CD and use it to check your memory / hard disk(s).
-wr975
The problem is there is no BSOD - it is true freezing (rock solid) or spontaneous reboot. I have automatic reboot disabled.
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Yes, run Memtest86. Will probably fail fast if memory is faulty. XP can be forgiving about memory errors, not all programs are.
Could be dying power supply, motherboard - guessing. Remember to run sfc /scannow. Is there a repair IE component hidden somewhere?
-dk70
I have run memtest.
I think it might be related to hard disk filesystem errors - I have done a full chkdsk of drive C (including checking data areas and free space). There were no problems with hard disk faults but there were a few errors in the file system. CHKDSK seems to have fixed them so we shall see.
Of course it may be that the errors were caused by dirty restarts !
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Did you run chkdsk /r? that locates bad sectors.
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I ran chkdsk c: /v /r /x from a separate windows installation.
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Carol: are you sure it isn't something more serious?
I think that's what happens when a processor overheats, the system stops and then reboots. It has happened to me, but only under win98 on my older machine when the cpu fan stopped and i didn't notice it. I'm not sure if that's the default behaviour on XP, though.
PS: probably it's not that, but i thought i'd better put that out just in case.
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I'll check fan speeds and CPU temp in the BIOS next time I reboot. (I don't bother with mobo monitors any more running constantly)
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By the way....
[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]
http://fredericiana.com/2006/10/24/from-redmond-with-love/