Windows Vista: Internet Explorer 7.0: Cannot open Internet Options

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"No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." -- Nietzsche


And so continues my never-ending love/hate saga with Windows Vista:

You try to open Internet options From the IE Tools menu, or from the Control Panel Internet Options applet. In IE, you get a dialog box "this operation has been canceled due to restrictions ...". In Control Panel, it just silently fails. Yeesh, methinks - more Vista BS!

Well this just cropped up on my Vista box (or at least I just noticed it). So after not directly finding anything with a few well-placed searches (which right there indicates it's probably a fairly new issue), I decided to start undoing some of Microsoft's little "hotfixes". The latest crop were all installed on June 13, 2007 and the ones I removed include these KB numbers:

929123
931213
933566
905866
936825

I'm sorry I cannot be more specific, but I'm not gonna reboot after every single one. I uninstall four to six at a time and then reboot.

At any rate, it was one of the above, since now I've got the functionality back -- AND I've run a special ERUNT Registry backup to preserve it. I have System Restore turned off - for reasons I've detailed in a previous post. In fact, I've done about every fix detailed here to improve Vista performance.

To uninstall updates / hotfixes, you have to click the "View Installed Updates" link in the Control Panel's Programs and Features applet.

You guys test those security hotfixes, right? I run with User Account Control off. Maybe they just didn't test for that...

Incidentally, there is often a supported hotfix for many of these issues, but you have to go through a lot of trouble with Product Support to get them. Here is a site where many of these are contributed by users. Microsoft also now publishes a number of these as well on this page.

Also, Sandi Hardmeier is an MVP who runs a Vista / Internet Explorer - related hotfix site.

Summary:

I reinstalled the above Windows Updates, one - by - one, rebooting as instructed each time. This time, after testing every one, I no longer experience the described problem. This took me two hours of my professional time.

Who do I send the invoice to?

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous9:50 AM

    Man, I freakin HATE IE7. Why cant the menu bar go at top like every other normal window? Sometimes, my favorites list just doesnt appear. It opens up as a blank pane, causing me to panic thinking my years of collecting favorites was just whiped out. But, restart IE and there they are again. ARGHHH!!! And the freeze ups, I cant go a day surfing without this POS freezing up on me. And when I click the red X to close something, that means close it god dammit, not sit there and think about it for 10 seconds. Firefox and Opera both suck equally as much.... what do I have to do to get a decent freakin' browser, write it myself?!?!?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:54 AM

    lol, its all part of the surcharges and fees involved in using Vista.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous2:15 AM

    Sudden change in the Search engine settings in Internet
    Explorer     indicates your browser is hijacked. Before attempting to repair the Search to defaults, first scan the system for parasites and remove them.

    ReplyDelete

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