Spyware Sucks : Internet Explorer, Technology

Mark Russinovich: The Case of the Random IE and WMP rashes

sandi — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:50:00 GMT

I have just finished glancing over Mark Russinovich's latest blog entry, in which he described how he tracked down the cause of, and fix for, crashes affecting Internet Explorer on his Vista x64 gaming system, as well as crashes affecting Windows Media Player.

The diagnostic steps that Mark uses make for fantastic reading for the geeks amongst us - heck, all of his articles make for fantastic reading (especially his "The Case Of" blog entries).

I admit that I am not surprised that nVidia were at fault. Back in the days of IE5 (and to a lesser extent IE6) video card drivers were notorious for causing problems for Internet Explorer. It was standard operating procedure, especially for crashes involving kernel32.dll, to recommend updating video drivers and reducing hardware acceleration, and nuking a potentially corrupt IE cache (or, more precisely, a problematic index.dat file).

You can read Mark's article, "The Case of the Random IE and WMP rashes", here:
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/06/02/3065065.aspx

EOLAS: important changes soon

sandi — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:54:00 GMT

Well well well, isn't this interesting.

Microsoft have licensed the technologies that are covered by the infamous Eolas patent, and will be removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer.

Regular readers of this blog will remember that a recent US High Court decision cast doubt on whether the original award to EOLAS of $521 would stand. The potential was there for the award to be reduced to $187 million.

The change that has now been announced by the IE team will require no modifications to existing webpages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages. IE will revert to its original behaviour.

There will be a "preview release" incorporating the changes called the "Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview", which will be available in December 2007 via the Microsoft Download Center. The change will also be made part of the next pre-release versions of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. It is anticipated that the change will be released to the general public as part of IE's April 2008 Cumulative Update.

Announcement: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/08/ie-automatic-component-activation-changes-to-ie-activex-update.aspx

Revisiting the mystery user agent string IEMB3

sandi — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:23:00 GMT

Originally mentioned here , we have been unable to identify what is generating the UAS "IEMB3". If anybody knows, can you please reply to this entry? To repeat the original question: A User agent String (UAS) is made up of various segments that...(read more)

Google Desktop causing problems

sandi — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:03:00 GMT

Here is today's email question: "Dear Sandi, I would really appreciate your help. I've been trying for ages to find out what is wrong with my IE7 but there doesn't seem to be anything useful on the internet that I can find... Whenever...(read more)

Updated IE VPC images have been released

sandi — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:54:00 GMT

You can now download a free image of XPSP2 with IE6 or XPSP2 with IE7 installed at the link below - the images will expire on 7 December 2007: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang...(read more)

Heads up - the XP/IE6 Virtual PC image released back in November last year expires today, 1 April 2007

sandi — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 15:00:00 GMT

But rest assured, another image has been released which will not expire until 23 July 2007, and can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en

MSXML4 to be disabled in late 2007

sandi — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:11:00 GMT

MS are going to push out an IE specific kill-bit for MSXML4 in October. More information here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/xmlteam/archive/2007/03/12/msxml4-is-going-to-be-kill-bit-ed.aspx

Key changes:
http://blogs.msdn.com/xmlteam/archive/2007/03/12/upgrading-to-msxml-6-0.aspx