IE7 crashes - will not load any page

[jenlion]

So, as the "computer person" in the family, I get to help out when weird computer stuff happens.

My grandfather finally downloaded IE7 on his last computer. (He's got 4. He pretty much knows what he's doing). On this computer, though, IE7 refused to cooperate. After install, you can run it, the IE screen starts to open, and then it completely shuts down. He tried this a few times. (I think he was doing (shudder) a system restore after the failures).

I downloaded fresh and installed it again. Same results.

Cleared out a little bit of spyware (mywebsearch) but that's all I found. No Google Desktop, as another user reported. Doesn't work on a new profile, either -- action is the same.

Tried the trick with adding the RunOnce keys to the IE/Main section of the registry, but no luck.

Tried even using notepad to create a basic HTML file. Try to open that and I get this message: "There was a problem sending the command to the program". If I try start-run->

http://www.google.com,

I get IE flashing open, crashing, and the message "Windows cannot find... Make sure you typed the name correctly...".

There are no errors in the app or IE event logs.

I'm stumped. Anyone have a suggestion?? He's not so hot for firefox. IE worked in v6, therefore it should work in v7, thank you very much. I'd like to get it working for him....

 

[jenlion]

Just in case this comes up in a search... finally resolved.

- COMPLETELY removed mywebsearch from registry
- went back to IE6 (remove IE7 in add/remove programs)
- restarted computer in safe mode
- logged in as administrator (this is XP Home)
- Installed IE7. Because it's in safe mode, it can't download updates -- has to just use the file.
- DID NOT TOUCH IE7; rebooted in Safe Mode
- DID NOT TOUCH IE7; rebooted again in Safe Mode
- Log back in to safe mode as Administrator; run; still have error!
- Windows Update now wants to bless me with the updates I didn't get during install. Let it do that.
- reboot again
- now it works.

No idea what magical part of this process did it -- I am guessing it was having Windows Update do the final updating, though, because I'd basically done this all already. I did find a reference to a dll that could possibly not have registered, but that was during the last reboot, so I never did try it.

Good luck to any with this weird problem.