I found an interesting article on the ie7 beta which showed a way to test out & run the beta without having to install it. Here’s how: Download the beta, extract contents to a temp folder (ex. IE7), create a txt file in that folder named iexplore.exe.local (minus the .txt file ext) & look for & run iexplore.exe in that folder (not iesetup.exe), ie7 will then run. These instructions worked and allowed me to test out ie7 without uninstalling ie6 on my xpsp2 machine which was running fine to begin with.
The article got me hooked because I could test out ie7 without installing/replacing ie6.
However, since performing this I’ve noticed that my system now has problems running IE6, I find that several ie sessions can hang while I’m trying to surf sites that I normally browse on a regular basis. Website links from email appear to function after a period of time but some desktop website link shortcuts that I’ve setup don’t seem to work anymore and just cause ie6 to hang and also cause winxp’s performance to go down the toilet. Just opening up ie6 seems to be a chore. I am just about ready to re-image this pc with an image I recently created but before I do that I thought I’d check with the TR community to see if anyone else has seen anything similar or have tried this ie7 beta workaround and found a way to remedy this problem. Re-imaging isn’t a problem but it seems like a cop out especially if I can find a fix for this without resorting to wiping the drive clean and starting fresh again. XP should be more resilient than it’s showing and this problem isn’t just affecting ie6, it’s also affecting the perf. of my off2k3 apps as well. I haven’t installed any new apps recently and my os & off.apps are up to date, all req. patches installed as of 2/6/06 – my probs started yesterday immed. after farting around with this “interesting” article (not so interesting anymore). Any help is appreciated, I have 1250 points to offer so I’ll offer it all. thx…rob,wpg