Malware, the perennial enemy of the Web surfer, has received a lot of publicity and analysis over the past 12 months and rightly so, but this attention has, in some ways, proven to be a two-edged sword.
It is easy to forget that issues with Internet Explorer are not always caused by malware, especially when the support groups are full of cries for help from owners of infected machines. Sometimes, when malware fixes don't work, people are at a loss as to what to do next. I have even seen examples where people have been advised to reformat their machines unnecessarily, but I have reached the thread too late to say "No, don't do that yet."
Now for the good newsÂ…
The Internet Explorer of today is far more stable than it was back in 1999 when I first started supporting users. Back then kernel32.dll and wininet.dll crashes were regularly reported in the newsgroups – now such errors are only occasionally reported. Not only that, when non-malware issues do occur they are often easy to fix and often are solved by the same few tried and true procedures.
It's beyond the scope of this article to cover all of the potential fixes for my "Top 10" Internet Explorer issues, what you'll find here is what experience has taught me is most likely to succeed. Note: Some of these procedures are for more advanced users.
