Old gripes about Internet Explorer 5

Newer IE5 gripes are on another page.
Update June 2002: Many links on this page are no longer valid as they refer to releases of IE that Microsoft no longer supports. Microsoft has this page for users of previous versions of IE. There are also some links here to Windows magazine which no longer has its own web site. To find an article that appeared in Windows magazine try looking here (thanks to Scot Finnie).

Upgrading from IE 5.0 to IE 5.01

The main home page for Internet Explorer is www.microsoft.com/ie. The base version of IE 5.01 (with 56 bit encryption) for Windows 98 and NT4 can be downloaded from: www.microsoft.com/msdownload/iebuild/ie501_win32/en/136816.htm. The install process is done in two phases, first you run an IE5 setup program, then you download the desired components of the IE5 software suite. This is not explained on the Microsoft web site and differs significantly from the IE version 4 upgrade process.

The IE 5 setup program lets you pick and chose the components and companion products to IE 5 that you want to download and install. During the download process, it displays the number of kilobytes (KB) downloaded so far and the total number of KB that will be downloaded.

At one point during my download, the setup seemed to hang. It said that 6388KB of 7601KB was received and the number stopped changing. However, my computer was nonetheless downloading away. I know this from two sources. First, the NT Performance Monitor showed a steady rate of data received before and after the apparent hang. Likewise the NT Dialup Networking Monitor also showed a "Bytes In" count that was constantly increasing. After about 10 minutes, the IE 5 setup program again showed an increasing number of bytes recieved. This was my second time experiencing this problem.

The browser downloaded and installed. Afterwards, I opened the browser to see the new version with Help->About.
Not so fast...

First, the browser home page had been changed from the blank page I always use to:
www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=ie&ar=runonce&pver=5.0&O1=internal&plcid=1103
The page failed to load because I was off-line at the time. Of course there is no warning that you should be online when open the browser for the first time after the upgrade (now you know). I shut down the browser and started it up again and it reverted back to the blank home page that it was initially configured with. Curious to see what this page was, I tried entering the above URL into IE the next time I went online. No go. It got redirected to www.msn.com/runonce/download50.asp (Note: as of June 2002 this link is not valid) which displayed a blank web page. A view source shows a page worth of HTML, but nonetheless, IE 5 displays a blank page.

After the upgrade to v5.01 a Help -> About does not say that its version 5.01. This is what prompted the Versions of IE 5 gripe above. I had to ask the Microsoft tech support person which version of IE was really installed. Version 5.01 shows up as 5.00.2919.6307 under Windows 95,98 and NT4.

IE5 setup program offers a choice of either a typical install or minimal and customize. With many products each of these three are separate choices, but here minimal and customize are a single combined choice which is confusing.

While downloading version 5.01 the display window from the IE5 setup program does not show the download speed which IE5 itself often does. It also does not show the percent completed.

The setup program stalled even though data was still streaming into the machine and it was the only online application running. For a long time (not expecting this, I didn't time it) it said that 6,553 of 8,243KB was recieved. The Windows 98 System Monitor however, showed a steady stream of recieved data.

I cancelled it and restarted the download. This time it said that only 2.9 megabytes needed to be downloaded, not the full 8 meg or so. I had told it not to recover from the previous failed download but instead to restart from the top. Judging by the amount of data it was going to download, it seems to not start from the top. Again it got stuck at 6553KB. I have run this same upgrade of IE on other Windows 98 machines and had not experienced this problem.

The next time I was more determined to have it restart fresh. I deleted the folder "Windows Update Setup Files" and said to run IE5SETUP from its current location rather than downloading it to my pc. Unfortunately, outside considerations made me have to cancel this new download attempt after only 229KB was downloaded. It didn't like being cancelled. It said

Please wait while setup is canceling - This may take several minutes
Do not restart your computer - rebooting could harm your system

Harm my system! Okay, I waited. And waited. Again, System Monitor showed that data was still flowing into the computer. Netscape could not compete with this? After 10 or 15 minutes, I shut down the Internet connection and the IE5 setup program died.

A few days after experiencing the above, I again tried to download v5.01 on this same machine but watched the progress indications more closely. It backed up! At one point the display said that 3755KB of 8243KB had been downloaded so far. Then I went to an unrelated web site to kill some time and covered up the setup program's window. A minute later, I again looked at the setup program's display at the count of the number of bytes received so far had backed up to 3639KB.

The IE 5 setup program hung yet again at 6553KB out of 8243KB. This time I let it chug away for about 40 minutes (it was connected at 50,600bps). By hung, I mean that the count of the number of bytes received did not change despite the fact that System Monitor showed data really was flowing into the system at the same steady normal rate it had been for the first 6,552KB. Eventually it finished.

After the initial installation of IE5.01 and the required reboot afterwards, the Windows 98 task scheduler was activated. On this system it had been disabled. Fortunately, it could be disabled again.

I knew enough by now to be logged on to the Internet when running IE for the first time after the upgrade. The one-time web page that it displays offers to make MSN your home page and also offers a tour of IE. I think its the same tour you can get via the tour option under Help on the IE menu bar.

The good news is that v5.0 was at 128 bit security before the upgrade (see below for more) and remains at this high level of security after the upgrade.

Upgrading to 128 bit encryption security on NT4

There are many variations of Internet Explorer version 5. Among them are differences in the strength of the encryption used with secure connections. The choices I've seen are 40 bit, 56 bit and 128 bit. The higher the number of bits used for encryption the more secure the encryption is.

One web site that I use only allows me to enter transactions if my browser is using the highest possible security - 128 bit. I had upgraded IE5 from 40 or 56 bit security to 128 bit security a few times already and was familiar with the routine. However, in April, 2000 I had a problem with this upgrade on a system running Windows NT4 at Service Pack 6a and IE 5 (specifically version 5.00.2314.1003).

The way you upgrade IE5 from low to high security is to download a file and run it. This file is called the "High Encryption Pack". The installation of the High Encryption Pack failed in this case with an error message that said under Windows NT4, Service Pack 4 or 5 is required. Service Packs are collections of bug fixes. An NT4 user can determine the latest Service Pack applied to their system by running the winver program from START->RUN. The initial failure was on April 16, 2000.

I opened up a problem incident with Microsoft technical support about this. Initially, the support person suggested checking into a few things that turned out not to be relevant. Then he suggested installing the high encryption version of Service Pack 6a. I did not get around to doing this before the support person changed his mind and instead went with one of my suggestions - upgrading to IE 5.01 first. This was a guess on my part, based on believing the initial error message (naive?). Since IE 5.01 is newer than IE 5, I guessed that it might be more aware of SP6a which is relatively new. Its also easy to envision the Microsoft programmers neglecting to deal with newer service packs. Y2K was a perfect example of failing to code programs to deal with the future.

Of course, the upgrade of IE from 5 to 5.01 entailed its own set of gripes. These were detailed above in the topic about upgrading from v5.0 to v5.01.

As noted above, I knew the routine involved in applying the High Encryption Pack, but for anyone doing this for the first time, there are many potential "gotchas" in the upgrade. The following assumes you are running IE 5.01.

When you get to the point where downloading begins you are asked whether to run program IE501DOM.EXE from its current location or save it to disk. It definitely works with running it from the current location and probably would work the other way to. Microsoft offers no advice on this (at least not on the web page that causes the download to start).

When IE501DOM.EXE finishes downloading (more confusion: why is it downloaded when you say to run it from its current location?) you get a security warning window. Again, there is no Microsoft documentation on how to deal with this window or what it means. Strange how upgrading the security of IE causes a security warning. Anyway, this window asks if you want to install and run Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 and Internet Tools. The answer of a sane human being would be no, since we are trying to install the High Encryption Pack. At the time you are reading this question, you are already running IE5.01 so why would you want to install it again? Bad (really bad) documentation. The correct answer is yes.

Just for fun, I clicked on the More Info button at the bottom of this security warning window. It tells me that the certificate is valid. Not true. I also clicked on the "Microsoft Corporation" link to see the certificate and it has expired! The day I looked at it was May 8, 2000. It had expired on April 16, 2000.

Internet Explorer 5 with 128 bit security

When you are all done, a Help -> About should look like the picture on the right, with the Cipher Strength showing as 128 bit. Of course when doing the security upgrade, Microsoft refers to it as the "High Encryption Pack" but in the Help -> About the words "High" or "Encryption" or "Pack" don't appear. I'm pretty sure the word "Cipher" is not used in describing the High Encryption Pack at all.

A final observation about my dealings with Microsoft tech support on this matter. The support person never operated under the assumption that the original error message could be correct. Apparently after working in Microsoft tech support for a while you come to assume that error messages do not indicate the source of the problem. A sorry state.

In this case, it appears that the original error message was, in fact, correct. IE5.0 does not seem to deal with NT4 Service Pack 6a well, while IE5.01 does. My main gripe here is the poor documentation of it. IE5.0 was apparently written while NT SP 4 and 5 were current and it checks that they are applied to the current NT4 system. Fine. When it doesn't find them, it says it needs them and quits. Fine. However, after living thru five service packs for Windows NT4 you would think the IE5 developers might be a little more cognizant of yet another service pack in the future.

Upgrading from IE 5.01 to IE 5.01 with Service Pack 1

October 10, 2000. To avoid IE5.5 problems, I tried to upgrade a computer with IE 5.01 to apply the service pack to it. That is, I wanted to get as close on maintenance as I could to IE5.5, without actually installing version 5.5. The logical place to start is at the official IE home page. Of course, this page has no information about IE 5.01 or its service pack. This is typical of Microsoft, leaving users of old versions to twist in the wind. I entered "service pack" into the search box on the IE home page and did find a link to it however. (Note: as of June 2002 this link is not valid)

The application that updates IE does not tell you what version it is downloading. I tried to download IE5.01 with SP1 rather than IE5.5, but there is no way in heck to know which version of IE you are downloading. I started at the web page for version 5.01 SP1, (Note: as of June 2002 this link is not valid) we'll see if that's what I really get.

October 11, 2000. I downloaded about 14 megabytes, consisting of the browser and the Java Virtual Machine. There is an option you can specify in the IE5 update application to download the necessary files, but not install them. This is what I chose because I prefer to break up a big operation into discrete steps. The download resulted in a new subdirectory called BASEIE40_NTx86 being created in the C:\Windows Update Setup Files directory. This new subdirectory had 17 megabytes worth of files.

After the download, I logged off the Internet and went to run the update. You do this by running ie5update.exe in c:\Windows Update Setup Files. Of course, the installation did not work.

The Setup files you are installing from do not include the files needed to install one or more of the components you have selected. When the Setup files were downloaded, fewer components were selected. Only the files needed for those components were downloaded. If you have access to the Internet, you can download the additional files needed. If you want to install all of the components you have selected, and you have access to the Internet, click Yes. If you do not have access to the Internet, click No. Then clear some of the components you have selected, and try again.

This is not true. I selected only four components (the first four: browser, JVM, help files and offline browsing pack) both at download time and install time and was very careful about this. Anyone with a slow dial-up net connection would be very careful about this sort of thing.

Nonetheless, having no choice, I went back online and tried to update IE. I wanted to download yet another 12 megabytes of data! There seems to be no way to point the IE setup program to the files that already exist on your computer.

I suspected that once the IE5 setup program phoned home, it found a newer version of IE (5.5) and wanted to download that. What else could explain another large download at this point?

I then went back to the IE 5.01 with SP1 home page and chose to download the ie5setup.exe to my hard disk on the hope that it would only download 5.01 SP1 files. Running this version of the setup program would have resulted in downloading over 30 megabytes of data for the same four items.

I notice that it wanted to install the browser into a directory called C:\Program Files\Plus!\Microsoft Internet. Looking at this directory, I found another copy of the IE5 setup program. Its properties showed it to be version 5.00.2918.2600. This copy of the setup program thought that the browser was up to date (not true) and allowed me to download just the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Normally, you can not download just the JVM if the browser is not the latest version. Since upgrading the JVM was my immediate need, that's all I did. Basically, I gave up trying to get from v5.01 to v5.01 with SP1.

JavaScript

In response to the ILOVEYOU virus, I disabled something called Active Scripting in Outlook 2000 and forgot about it. Every now and then a web site didn't work right, but I thought nothing of it, not making a connection between the two. Specifically, web sites had buttons that when I clicked on them nothing happened. I thought nothing of it until a web site complained that my web browser (IE v5.01) was not JavaScript capable. It certainly is. Loading the same page into Netscape Navigator worked fine as did another site where button clicking hadn't worked.

I went hunting all around Tools -> Internet Options but could find no option for JavaScript. In contrast, Netscape Navigator has a very simple check box to Enable JavaScript. Finally, it occurred to me that Active Scripting must be to blame. Sure enough, re-enabling it fixed the problem. Of course, IE has no help that explains what Active Scripting is.

To change Active Scripting, follow this trial of bread crumbs: Tools ==> Internet Options ==> Security tab ==> Custom Level button ==> active scripting option.

IE version 5.5 -- Upgrading and Opinions

Scot Finnie has some great gripes on upgrading to IE 5.5. He writes the Windows Insider column of Windows Magazine. (Note: the Windows magazine web site no longer exists) On August 17, 2000 the column had a topic called Internet Explorer 5.5 Issues where he warns that if you upgrade you should expect problems. His advice on v5.5? Don't bother. Quoting:

Microsoft considers any IE update to be an opportunity to patch Windows itself -- a practice I find appalling. Because the company barely beta tests these patches at all. What's more, Microsoft hasn't added any user-oriented feature to IE in more than a year that's been worth your time and effort...Whether you know it, you're an unwitting beta tester, in my opinion, when you download and install IE 5.5.

Another section of the same column reports on all the problems readers have reported back to him. The only consistent problem is poor performance, both with the load time of the browser itself, and also web pages. Finally, the column notes the various recommendations for how to install IE5.5. Lots of conflicting advice floating around the net.

The August 24, 2000 edition of Scott Finnie's newsletter Win Insider has a section called About the IE 5.5 Experience. Here Mr. Finnie recaps the gripes that readers of the newsletter have written to him about. Its a looooong list. So far, he reports that 20 percent of the respondents had big problems. As a result he says: I've decided to place Internet Explorer 5.5 on Windows Insider's "Don't Install It" list.

The January 11, 2001 edition of the newsletter continues to document problems with IE 5.5. Says Mr. Finnie, "... do not install IE 5.5. If you have done so, I suggest you uninstall it"

It's a Good Thing Internet Explorer 5.5 is Free... ... because you'd hate to pay real money for this upgrade.
Hands-On Column by Bill Machrone in PC Magazine. August 2000. Quoting: There's less here than meets the eye, and what few substantial changes we found are proprietary, taking IE farther into Microsoft's self-referential world.

September 20, 2000. Due to the advice above, I installed IE5.5 on an NT4 (SP6a) machine that is not used for anything important. Specifically, it was an upgrade of IE5.0 to IE5.5.

My home page is blank. After the upgrade I ran IE5.5 while offline to look at the Help=>About. Instead of a blank page, I got an error message "The page cannot be displayed". Microsoft has a welcome web page that they show you the first time only. However, if your first run of the browser occurs while off-line, you never see this welcome page. The URL was:
www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=ie&ar=runonce&pver=5.5&plcid=0x0409

FYI: The upgrade changed the graphic used in both the splash screen and the Help=>About window.

After rebooting a couple times, the IE icon on the desktop disappeared. No big deal to put another one back, but I don't think I deleted it by mistake.

IE5.5 did not print or display a certain web page from www.bestbookbuys.com correctly after I changed the display to smallest fonts from medium fonts. Near to the top a page on this site devoted to a single book, is a picture of the book and information about the book just to the right of it. With the smallest fonts, IE5.5 superimposed the text book description on top of the book image. The good news here is that I changed the display so the web page would not be truncated on the right side (where the prices for the books are). I knew it would truncate the printed page because of the new print preview feature in v5.5. Finally, print preview!

IE 5.5 crashed shortly after it was installed

Two days after installing IE5.5, it crashed (see right). The main reason I use IE vs. Netscape is that it does not crash as often. At least IE5.01 does not crash as often, in fact, it hardly ever crashes. This crash was not because I was on some new web site that I had never used before. It happened with about 6 browser windows open concurrently.

September 25, 2000. I recently installed an evaluation version of SQL Server 7. Under the main SQL Server directory, there is a sub-directory called HTML (C:\MSSQL7\HTML) and within that directory is a file called "database.htm". When I double-clicked on this file, IE5.5 crashed trying to display it.

October 17,2000.
IE5.5 crashed on me twice. I have an IE favorite that displays the current cookies. It invokes Javascript directly:
   javascript: alert("cookie is ==>" + document.cookie + "<==");
There is not much that can go wrong here, but twice IE objected to it saying that the document object was not defined. The browser crashed very shortly thereafter. This happened both on NT4 and also on Windows 2000 with service pack 1. It does not happened all the time but after displaying the cookies at a few web sites, eventually the above link results in the error message about the document object not being defined. On Windows 2000 displaying this Favorite URL caused the browser to hang a few times too.

I also had a printing problem with an article on the web site of PC World magazine. A large picture got chopped off. The top 20% of the picture printed on page 5, but the rest of the picture was not continued onto page 6. This happened both in the Print Preview function and when really printing. The same article printed fine with Navigator v4.72.

FYI: Internet Explorer Setup Secrets. Ed Bott has assembled a list of do's and don'ts help ensure that your IE 5.5 upgrade goes smoothly.

Upgrading to IE5.01 SP2

March 23, 2001. The first time I try it, it fails. I like to download the entire browser to my hard disk so that I can install it off-line and install it multiple times, if need be. After only a minute or so of downloading, I get this error:

The error message is wrong. I was indeed connected to the Internet just fine. The message fails to mention that it has put a new icon on my NT4 desktop (see above).

I double click this new icon and the download starts up again (as I said, I was connected) and runs for quite a while and downloads everything just fine. What was the original problem? Only a lazy programmer at Microsoft, who could not be bothered writing an accurate error message, knows for sure.

March 30, 2001. The installation of IE5.01 SP2 over IE5.01 went fine (Windows NT4 SP6). The amount of freespace on the C disk and the D disk was, amazingly, the same before and after the installation. A Help->About even says "Update Versions: SP2."

ZoneAlarm asked if I wanted to allow IE to access the Internet the first time I ran it. This is actually a good thing. However, for an unknown reason ZoneAlarm also asked if IE could accept connections from the Internet. This should not have happened. I said no and you should too.

The first day using IE5.01 SP2, I noticed that on some web pages at finance.yahoo.com that View->Source no longer works. It does nothing. I'm not sure yet if this is a bug or by design.
May 21, 2001. Update. A reader of this page wrote to say that it worked for him. The View -> Source does work at the main finance.yahoo.com page. However it does not work at http://finance.yahoo.com/a0?u I confirmed this today under NT4 SP6a and the reader confirmed it under Windows 98 SE. (thanks Peter)

The upgrade re-enabled program loadwc.exe that runs at boot time. I had previously disabled it after determining it serves no useful purpose.

FYI: This version of IE, at least under NT4 with SP6, does not work with AdSubtract (version SE 1.68). The fault lies with AdSubtract, which fails to block ads with this version of IE.