Ticket Options

Question Profile

Question Details

TICKET ARCHIVE -> Internet Explorer on iMac Will Not Open

goodstuff04 - Jun 12, 2007 - 9:58 pm

My Internet Explorer will not open anymore. I get the "whirling ball of death" and have to "Force Quit" to stop the ball. I do not use it much, but there are a few Internet sites that I have to use IE to get information from. The last thing I remember doing before this happened was I downloaded the new Adobe Reader 8.
I also opened my Toast Titanium and tried to update the software but did not use it for anything.

Any ideas what I can do to get back to IE being able to open and connect to the Internet?

All my other web browsers work just fine - Safari, Firefox, Camino -

Thanks
Mary

Jabberwocky - Jun 14, 2007 - 10:10 am

The spinning whirly-whatsit suggests that it doesn't like something, might just be corrupt preferences, or a corrupt element of the app itself.

• delete Internet Explorer
• delete IE preferences folder - it's called Explorer in ~/Library/Preferences
(save the file Favorites.html if necessary)
• empty trash
• rebuild permissions
• download a new copy of the IE installer here:
http://www.pure-mac.com/webb.html#mie
• install IE
• try again WITHOUT the old Favorites.html file
• if that works, and you need it, transpose the old Favorites.html with the new one.

Let me know how you get on...

Justin

goodstuff04 - Jun 15, 2007 - 1:12 am

Hi Justin,
You are just great! I solved my Internet Explorer problem by following your steps. Thanks so very much! I also signed up and paid to become a VIP member here for 3 months because this web site is so awesome!

Once I got IE to load again I went to IE Preferences and tried to make "Google" the home page and once again IE would no longer load. So, I think that Microsoft no longer allows Google to be a home page using IE Preferences. See if you can get IE to load directly using "Google" as the homepage.

For now, I have made "Yahoo" my homepage because I do not trust this
IE to ever work very well. I feel sorry for all the PC people who do not have a clue how great Mac's work and how easy they are in every way!

I will still use Safari and Firefox and Camino most of the time on my iMac, but
every once in a while I have to use IE to get a web page to display any information.

Thank you again for your help!
Mary

Jabberwocky - Jun 15, 2007 - 7:01 am

Money well spent! And I am sure Scott (site founder) would agree!

IE for the Mac was droped by Microsoft back in 2003 and their site says this:

INTERNET EXPLORER FOR MAC NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

In June 2003, the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit announced that Internet Explorer for Mac would undergo no further development, and support would cease in 2005. In accordance with published support lifecycle policies, Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and is not providing any further security or performance updates.

Accordingly, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac is no longer available for download from Microsoft. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.


Web technology has moved on considerably since then, so I would suggest that IE simply cannot cope with the new scripts and functionality. There are many browsers to choose from but I find that FireFox is a good intermediary between IE and Safari.

But I am curious, the google start page loaded ok for me in IE - what site are you trying to get to that requires IE?

I have an off-the-shelf product that actually disables features if the browser is detected as Netscape and Macs are not even considered. It is built with Windows IE 6 in mind, alone. That quite frankly, is just lazy coding.

goodstuff04 - Jun 15, 2007 - 8:51 am

I still have "issues" with anything Google. I must have some random preference
setting checked that is causing IE to freeze under certain conditions. I can now load " iGoogle" but IE will not load all the data on that page and will not allow me to access the "Make it your home page" information.

The web sites that I ran into that required IE were usually college or univeristy web sites that I needed this last year while my son was applying for admission, and usually it was some "form" they required, but it has been awhile since I actually had this problem, so maybe this is not even something for me to worry about and I can just eliminate ever having to access IE for any reason.

It is still bothersome that Google gets hung up, but I'll not worry about it anymore and just use the other search engines.

Can you think of any setting that might be causing Google to freeze on IE?

Also, what do you think of Leopard? Everyone in my family has Macs: (3)
Power PC's and (1) Intel
I hope it does not have lots of bugs when they release it. So far it sounds pretty good. I think I want it just for the "Time Machine" feature so I can go back and undo stupid things that I do to my computer!

I also worry that I will have to get rid of my Power PC's and move to the intel based Macs to really keep up and not be lost in "old technology land."

Thanks for your help. I can't tell you how great it is to actually have somewhere to go that is easy to get some help with little matters that pop up with my Macs!

Mary