Windows XP's SP3 Makes Reverting to IE6 Impossible

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
According to recent findings, once a Windows XP machine is upgraded to service pack 3, it's impossible to uninstall Internet Explorer 7, if it happens to be installed. It's a truly odd bug, though, because if you install SP3 with IE6 installed, you can install IE7 after the fact and then proceed to uninstall it if you want.

The reason is because SP3 conveniently overwrites the IE6 backup directory, which is created during the IE7 installation. Once SP3 is installed, it voids the folder, making it impossible to revert. It may be possible to perform a System Restore, but that's usually a last resort. The moral of the story? Don't install IE7 if you don't want it, and just make sure that it's de-selected under Windows Update so you don't accidentally find yourself with it.

Of course, if you don't use Internet Explorer as your primary browser, then it really doesn't matter how you do things.

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If that's all a bit confusing, here's what you should take away: If you don't plan to use IE7, don't install it. Period. If you do plan to install it, but want to be able to uninstall it, then you should load Windows XP SP3 before upgrading from IE6 to IE7. If you upgraded Internet Explorer before installing XP SP3, the only way to uninstall it would be to uninstall the entire service pack, which is really far more trouble than its worth.

Source: Download Squad
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
The last time I reverted IE7 to IE6, IE6 would randomly crash one out of four times whenever I opened a window. Got so aggravating I just reinstalled IE7. Is a big reason I use Opera, but there are some things I just need IE for.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
That is very strange... You might have been able to just re-install IE6. There is a setup file available on the Microsoft site somewhere that would download the required files and re-install it. I am not sure that would fix the problem though (and it might just tell you it's installed already).

I really don't like Opera, but I believe most of it to be just because of the GUI. I cannot get used to it, and in some regards, it feels counter-intuitive. The absolute biggest issue with it, though, is that on some websites, the images will not fully load. Some might, but others won't, and if I refresh the page, it might make some images show up, but then cancel out the others again.

The only way around it is to right-click on a photo and say "Reload image", or something like that. There's even another site I used to visit that told me straight-out, "You need another browser to view these images, please use Firefox".

Hell knows how that could even happen! You ever experience that?
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Some of the GUI is definitely not intuitive, and furthermore the control panel settings are absurd and make little sense. But everything is customizable to the extreme, and as with any food that is an acquired taste, it gets better quickly after the initial aggravations. I can't stomach going back, and I have to use computers with only IE/FF regularly.

The actual window is completely customizable, can show/hide/move almost anything anywhere. It loads quickly, is extremely hard to crash, hard to exploit, has decent popup protection, and simply is faster than anything else out there. I can also leave it open around the clock without it eventually going nuts on the CPU usage and RAM usage... I probably already said all this before though, Opera is something that gets brought up repeatedly in forums I join. :)

40 tabs currently open, CPU usage 2-5% max, 229mb of RAM in use and not going up or down by a single 1kb unless I actually do something first to warrant it.

Edit: About your question, yes I have experienced that. Typcially when I see it happening, it is because when you open the image in another window the site doesn't allow direct linking to the image. So the new tab is blank, and Opera uses the blank image for its cache file, blanking it out of the original tab window. Anandtech in particular was this way. I've had a few sites tell me to use FF, but they still work in Opera. There are maybe ~5 sites that I must use IE for still, but I'd have to sit down and try to remember them just now...
 
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Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
I have no doubts that you are correct on the stability issue. Firefox for me crashes at least twice a day, and when it doesn't crash, it stalls on a regular basis. I can't exactly blame it all on the browser though, since I'm in a 64-bit environment and emulating a 32-bit Flash plugin, so I'm sure that's bound to cause instabilities also. I'm just waiting for 3.0, hoping that it will fix a lot of these problems.

"40 tabs currently open, CPU usage 2-5% max, 229mb of RAM in use and not going up or down by a single 1kb unless I actually do something first to warrant it."

I assume that's because Opera doesn't keep the information loaded into memory? For 40 tabs, that seems like an insanely low amount of memory. I'm sure it must have some sort of optimization going on. Right now for me, I have fifteen tabs open and it's hogging about 750MB of RAM and swap. I do believe part of that has to do with that plugin though, which hogs a lot of memory itself.

I do wish Adobe would come out with a native 64-bit Linux plugin :-/

"About your question, yes I have experienced that. Typically when I see it happening, it is because when you open the image in another window the site doesn't allow direct linking to the image."

Yeah that's not the problem with me. One site I noticed it with is the Tech Report. None of their pages will load the images 100% of the time... ever. Perhaps you can check one of their articles out and see if it does it to you. It could be a Linux issue, or something else, I'm unsure.
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Yeah, Opera allows you to set how much you want stored in the main memory and how much to just dump in virtual memory. Usually it hovers around 220mb VM size after over a day or so of use, without being closed or any crashes. Which is fine with me since it's still very responsive and fast.

750mb combined seems insanely high, but as I said I don't use IE or FF enough to know if that's normal or not! ;) With Opera I tend to leave a few tabs open for days as a reminder before getting around to them. Right now, 28 tabs. 169MB, 223VM in use. Task Manager says it peaked as high as 206MB of RAM in use at some point.

I have started browsing TTR more often, but I have not had any image issues with them. They load fine? Somewhat ironic though, truth be told when I load several pages in quick succession for these specific forums, some pages will "hang" at the exact same spot just before the forum itself loads. I just chalked it up to my bad habits since I tend to hammer links rather hard, open them as fast as I can click 'em if the site can keep up.
 
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Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
No, 750MB is not normal at all. I just have an odd setup where I'm emulating a 32-bit plugin, which doesn't help at all. I believe also part of it has to do with it allowing more memory to be used since so much is available. I have 4GB and 4GB worth of swap, so it feels free to take up as much as it likes, since it's not being used.

TTR still has problems with my Opera, in addition to many other sites, so I am just assuming it's my install. Not sure what it would be exactly, though. I'm not too disheartened since I really have no intention to begin using it, but it struck me odd anyway.

Sorry to hear about the problems with these forums... I have no idea why that's the case. Have you ever had problems with the site itself?
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
No, but I don't usually tend to open 5+ links to the main site at the same time. ;) If I go slow enough and let pages fully load beforethen it almost never happens... it happens rare enough that I can just hit F5 for the few pages that don't make it and they reload correctly, not a biggie.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Still a rather strange issue though... I've never had it with any browser, so I'm hoping it's just Opera for some reason.

At least it's an easy fix, I guess.
 
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