Summary: Internet Explorer 8 has been released. Many eager early adopters are trying it, and occasionally running into trouble. What should you do?
Should I install IE8? What do you think of it?
I installed IE8 and it broke _____ - how do I fix it or revert back to what I had before?
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Incoming questions on Internet Explorer version 8 have been falling into those two buckets.
My reaction? As they say on the legal TV dramas "asked and answered". The second class of question kinda leads to an answer for the first, don't you think?
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Full disclosure: I have not installed IE8, so I can't and won't comment on any of its new features and improvements. I've heard some good things in various reviews, but I've also heard that there's no great rush to install it either.
What I have heard is that second class of question - people install it and it breaks something.
And I've heard it a lot.
At first I thought I was only hearing it about the Beta version, which is to be expected. Unfortunately, the questions have continued at roughly the same rate after IE8 was released, and from people who've clearly installed the released version.
That's disappointing.
Now, let's be clear: I'm only going to hear from people who have a problem. There may be millions of happy IE8 users out there. But the number of people having problems concerns me.
My advice: wait. It's what I'm electing to do for now.
If you can't wait: backup first.
By backup, I do mean take an image snapshot of your entire machine, so that if you run into problems with IE8 you can easily revert the machine's complete state to what it was prior to the installation. That's what I'll be doing when the time comes.
The reason I press hard on a backup is simple: a common theme among people having problems is that they can't revert. Perhaps the uninstall fails, or isn't even present, but regardless of why or how, they seem unable to cleanly remove IE8 and return to their pre-update version.
Having a full image backup will guarantee that you can do so.
So, as always, proceed with caution. Backup first. And if you can ... wait a while.
Related:
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Why would installing Beta software cause problems? Installing Beta or pre-release software is, in effect, asking for trouble. One simple precaution can prevent disastrous data loss.
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Why can't I rely on System Restore for backups? There's much confusion about what System Restore actually is and is not. In a nutshell, it's safest not to rely on it to restore your system.
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What backup program should I use? Backing up your computer's data is critical. What program should you use? There are many, but the best is which ever one you actually will use.
Article C3695 - April 3, 2009
I did back up, and got locked out of my computer. Worked on that quite a while. Of course I uninstalled IE 8. Now my computer takes 25 minutes, literally, to get into (meaning when hourglass stops showing). It would not let me do a system backup after the mess up.
Posted by: Kam at July 14, 2009 2:17 PMNow what do I/we do?!
I have not yet installed IE8. When I initially moved from IE6 to IE7, I could not access certain applications. The problem was that the user agent string was not updated correctly. Just wonder if there will be a similar problem with IE8.
Posted by: Richard at August 17, 2009 9:41 AMI have been beta testing Windows 7 for quite a few months now. IE8 is preinstalled with the OS and you cannot revert to anything lower... yeah, pages load quick (sometimes), the highlighting of text and searching is cool... my issues are with getting errors every, oh, 3 clicks saying "This tab has been recovered" and it loads the page again... this is highly annoying. That Critical update thing Microsoft does is infuriating. I spent three full days trying to diagnose a flaky wireless network issue on a laptop(happened to be right after I installed a new router) ended up being IE8... I uninstalled it out of desperation and low and behold... microsoft did it again (WINDOWS 7 IS AWESOME THOUGH!!! and I'm a Vista hater)
Posted by: Bryan T at August 20, 2009 12:15 AMLeo Said:
You may have said it elsewhere, but I've had really good results with the free version of Macrium Reflect (here) http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
The only thing I see that isn't perfect with it is that if you burn your image to CD/DVD, and then boot from a CD, you need 2 CD/DVD drives to restore. The solution is to put either the boot image or the restore image on a flash drive and the other on CD.
Oh, and I won't be installing IE 8 anytime soon.
Posted by: cjon at September 6, 2009 4:27 PMLeo Said:
You may have said it elsewhere, but I've had really good results with the free version of Macrium Reflect (here) http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
The only thing I see that isn't perfect with it is that if you burn your image to CD/DVD, and then boot from a CD, you need 2 CD/DVD drives to restore. The solution is to put either the boot image or the restore image on a flash drive and the other on CD.
Oh, and I won't be installing IE 8 anytime soon.
Posted by: cjon at September 6, 2009 4:29 PMDon't Do It!, Don't Do It!, Don't Do It!
Posted by: Greg Nyberg at October 10, 2009 7:48 AMI recently went against my own gut and decided to try it and I have had nothing but problems, "Internet Explorer Cannot Display this page" I cannot find a solution and I understand there is no turning back to 7. Thanks so much againn Microsoft for making my life miserable.
What's that number again for Apple?
Wish I had read your article sooner.
People are just dumb and they don't know whats going on. broken webpages are result of not complying of the webmasters to the new source codes. that is why there is a compatibility button on the top next to resfresh button. shheehhs. I hate dummies. I think the problem is, before they installed IE8, thier machine is already broken.
Posted by: techy at October 24, 2009 5:41 AMAfter 'updating' to IE8 Windows wouldn't boot. I got alerts about SHDOCVW.dll not being a valid Windows image. I had no icons, taskbars or anywhere to work from. I started in Safe Mode with command prompt and got to System Restore. I rolled it back and got everything back, but IE8 wouldn't connect, some other alert popped up. I uninstalled it and got IE6 back which was still on my computer. All is well and I'll do the 'waiting game' from now on.
Posted by: Tony Stephan at October 26, 2009 5:29 PMIE8 / XP SP3 - both of these seemed to work fine until on reboot Hal.dll was corrupted. Without this file you can't boot into windows. Googling IE8, there seem to be many hal.dll / boot.ini pblms with IE8. XPPro Sp2 IE6 works A+. Why mess this up?
Posted by: Liquid FUsion at October 29, 2009 12:20 AMI downloaded IE8 without knowing the possible problems, and I regret it.
Posted by: Bob Nichols at November 15, 2009 7:22 PMMany of my desk top shortcuts will not open.
Some web sites are very slow, but do open. I did no back up.
How can I go back to IE7, I had no problems there.
Thanks