Recently I received the following comment on my post (which has over 200 comments already) about an Internet Explorer problem. I had to chuckle when I read it and thought it was worth sharing.
This worked! Thanks. That was a really annoying problem.
My other computer which also runs XP doesn’t have the problem, but after I installed the fix on this one I discovered that it already has that entry.
But why does it have to be this way? Imagine what life would be like if all our electronic products required this degree of fiddling and bug fixes. Why, we would turn on a lamp, only to get an incomprehensible error message. We’d copy it down, Google it, and come to a site like this and find some incomprehensible gobbledy-gook to try as a solution. Some of us couldn’t make heads or tails of it, while others would manage to install it. Voila! the light goes on. But then the refrigerator issues some kind of warning and goes off. And the toaster hasn’t worked for a week. And the car stopped in the middle of the road yesterday, and some motorist said the thingami package needed to be reinstalled and the registers cleaned out of electronic gunk. “You need to update your anti-roadblock software,” the motorist said as the car finally started again. “Or this’ll keep on happening. Don’t get Norton, though.”
On one of my customer’s computers I’ve been getting this weird error message after I installed Internet Explorer 8.
A Program on your computer has corrupted your default search setting for Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer has reset this setting to your original search provider.
Internet Explorer will now open Search Settings, where you can change this setting or install more search providers.
The crazy thing I can’t actually make any changes in Search Settings. I can’t set another search engine to be the default. I’ve tried resetting IE 8, deleting some registry keys related to search settings, etc. and I still get this error everytime I start Internet Explorer. Does anyone have a clue why this is happening? Please comment if you have a solution or if you are experiencing the same issue.
Update with possible fix for XP computers: Brad has emailed me with a solution that fixed the problem for him. I’ve not got a chance to try it myself as my computers are working properly. Your results may vary. Please post a comment if this fix worked for you. (Update: Please read the comments for additional help on this issue. Special thanks to some of the very helpful people who left insightful comments!) (Second Update: Due to the amount of comments on this post, I’ve started a
new thread over in the forums to discuss this issue. Please
post your tips and comments there instead. Thanks!)
- Make sure IE 8 is closed then navigate to registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
- Add a new “Expandable String value” inside the above mentioned key with a value name of “AppData” and a value data of “%USERPROFILE%\Application Data”.
- Reopen IE 8 and see if you still get the error message.
Like I mentioned your results may vary, but please let us know if it fixed it for you or if you have found another alternative solution to this frustrating problem. (Thanks again, Brad)
(16 votes, average: 4.31 out of 5)
Loading ...
Has anyone ran into this problem? Periodically, I get the following message since
I installed Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2.
Internet Explorer was closed
To help protect your computer, Data Execution Prevention has closed Internet Explorer. Click to learn more.
The funny thing is, nothing seems to close. IE remains running. Does anyone know what causes this? Is it an addon, like Google Toolbar? Or just a bug?
Update: I’m pretty suspicious its a Google Toolbar problem. Several times this error has occured when I open a new tab. The tab will still open, but Google Toolbar will not appear on the new tab.
Its been several months since Beta 1 was released, now Microsoft has announced that Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8 is available. I’ve downloaded and installed the beta and here is a quick overview of the installation process and new features.
Installing…
Read more…
The Google toolbar keeps crashing for me which totally locks the IE 8 Beta 1. This is the error message that I get even when running the latest version 5 of the toolbar.
Anyone else experiencing this?
Update: I installed Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, and this does work with Google Toolbar Version 5! Version 4 will NOT work.
Update 2: I’m still receiving sporadic Data Execution Prevention errors, which I’m suspicious are related to Google Toolbar. Use Google Toolbar at your own risk.
I just downloaded and installed Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1. One of my favorite features is how IE 8.0 highlights the domain that you are currently browsing. You can view an example in screenshot #5. One big negative at this point however is that a lot of web sites don’t display properly unless you have the Emulate IE7 mode turned on. For example, G-mail and Google Reader have some display issues. You can read more on this issue here. In time this problem should disappear.
Check out these screenshots:
