Once the king of the hill, Internet Explorer 8 did little to stop the downward spiral of the stocks of the software giant, Microsoft. Here’s a look at some of the common problems and the possible solutions for Internet Explorer 8 users.
Internet Explorer 8 was released on the 19th March 2009, as a successor to the popular Internet Explorer 7. Although newer versions of IE are now in the market (IE9 released in March 2011 and the latest IE10 for Windows 8 in October 2012) and can be downloaded for free on the official website, the 8th version of the browser is still widely used across the world. It however, has many reported bugs, and more recently, Microsoft themselves admitted to some serious security issues with the browser, which made it highly susceptible to attacks by Internet hackers. The company promptly released a fix for this problem, but not before some serious damage was done to the reputation of the once behemoth of the software world.
The most common among the problems faced by the IE8 users are frequent freezing / hanging of the browser or webpages not loading properly. Here’s how you could go about fixing these issues –
More often than not, the problem might not be with the browser, but might be caused by a faulty plugin. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to refrain from installing plugins for your browser, especially from unreliable sources. To check if this is in fact the problem, follow this path in IE8 –
Settings » Internet Options » Programs » Manage add-ons
Here you should be able to see a list of all the add-ons that have been installed for the browser. You could either choose to disable the plugins from an unrecognized source, or you could choose to disable all the plugins; you could then enable them one by one and try running the program to see which of the plugins is actually causing the problem. You can also run it without add-ons by going to the ‘Start’ menu, clicking on ‘Run’, typing ‘iexplore.exe -extoff’ and then hitting the Enter button. If the browser works perfectly now, it means that there is a corrupted add-on present on your machine.
Viruses are another major cause of this problem. It is strongly advised to have a good antivirus software installed on your computer to safeguard your machine from virus attacks. Also, never blindly install any plugins, or click on any pop-ups that come up while using the browser.
Try resetting all the settings. This can be done by following this path –
Settings » Internet Options » Advanced » Reset
This tends to solve most problems with the browser.
Check your Internet connection. If a webpage doesn’t seem to be opening, it could just be a problem with that particular webpage. Try opening a different webpage. If the other page doesn’t seem to be loading either, it could be a problem with your Internet connection. You could make certain of this by trying to load the page on another browser.
Enable automatic Windows updates for your computer. There are constant updates from Microsoft, which resolves most of the performance issues with your operating system, which includes the stock browser, IE. You could also choose to check for updates for your Internet Explorer on the company’s website.
Lastly, you could choose to install the latest version of IE. IE10 and IE9 is available for free download from Microsoft’s official website.
There are plenty of web browsers available for free on the Internet. You could always choose to use a browser that seems most comfortable to use for you, and stay connected.