Internet Explorer 7 freezes at startup? | How to disable add-ons for IE7

Last Friday I went to a friend’s place to take a look of their computer because they think it have viruses on it.  Their computer wasn’t as bad as I thought……but then again the computer was quite fast; so having a few viruses / Trojans running at the background probably won’t make much difference   I ran a few virus / Trojan scanners on the computer and found a handful of spywares plus a Trojan! Just as I thought everything was sorted, I open up the Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 for short) and try to check my email……but all it did was “Stop and Stare” (am a fan of One Republic )  Are there other viruses remained in the computer?  Well……lets find out.  I use another virus scanner to scan the whole computer……but nothing was found……so I thought “Something’s Not Right Here” (another song from One Republic )  What is happening here?  Instead of trying out other virus / Trojan scanner on the computer, I decided to investigate the Add-ons in IE7; I know from my previous experience that add-ons can sometimes cause problems for IE.  After a while of trial and error, it turns out that the Yahoo Add-ons for IE7 were the ones who were causing the IE to freeze!!!  If your IE freezes at startup like the one I’ve encountered, you could try to disable some of the add-ons to see whether it will improve the situation.  Below is a step by step guide on how to disable add-ons for IE7:

Step 0: First of all, here is what the IE7 looks like when it freezes……it just “Stop and Stare”

Step 1: Press Shift + Ctrl + Esc on your keyboard to bring up the Windows Task Manager; select the iexplore.exe and click on the End Process button at the bottom to KILL the IE7:

Step 2: Now right click on the IE7 icon on your desktop (or in the Start Menu) and click on the Start Without Add-ons option:

Step 3: IE7 should start up immediately……probably faster than ever because there are no add-ons loaded this time.

Step 4: Select Tools on the right hand side, and click on the Internet Options:

Step 5: Now click on the Programs tab in the Internet Options:

Step 6: Click on the Manage add-ons button:

Step 7: In the Show area, make sure you’ve selected the “Add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer” option, and look for the add-ons that are Enabled!

Q. My IE7 got some many add-ons……how do I know which one is causing the problem?
A. When you got absolutely no clue, you can always use “Try and Error”   But you can kind of guess before doing that!  For me, I always pick on the ones that doesn’t have a publisher……but this time it turns out that Yahoo was the one that cause the problem……

Step 8: To disable an add-on, just select it from the list and click on the check button in front of Disable:

Step 9: Make sure the “bad guys” are disabled before you click on the OK button:

Step 10: IE is reminding you to give it a restart (restart IE = close and open up IE again):

Step 11: Click on the OK button to close the Internet Options:

Step 12: Click on the red cross to close IE7:

Step 13: Now when you start your IE7 again, (provided that you’ve disabled the right add-ons) your IE7 should be fine and healthy again!

Are my steps clear enough?

Is this article helpful to you?

What things you did / didn’t like?

Please feel free to leave your comments!

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Setting up the firewall in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
• Changing the system language in Mac OS X
• A step by step guide to Authoxy
• Add-on Management Improvements in Internet Explorer 8