IE7 Slow on Windows XP
While I am heavily a FireFox user (though I hate it for my own reasons), I do have to use Internet Explorer from time to time (for example when I need to visit the MS partner site). Anyway, my particular version of IE is 7 and it used to bug the hell out of me everytime I would start it up. It took a large number of seconds after the window was launched for the first tab to come up. That was the case till now. I accidentally figured out how to speed up IE7 and now the tab appears almost as quickly as the window is launched.
The answer lies in Add-ons that are installed on your IE. Depending on the type of add-ons, you can really have a slow moving IE7. So, the only thing I did was that I disabled the add-ons which I think I did not need. And that made the magical difference. To diable add-ons follow these steps:
- Go to “Tools” Menu
- Find the submenu for “Manage Add-ons”
- Under that click on the option for “Enable or Diable Add-ons”.
The following dialog box opens up: 
If you notice in this box, there are four options that are avaialable in the drop down at the top of the dialog. One of these is “Add-ons currently loaded in Internet Explorer”. You should choose this (it is chosen by default, so you shouldn’t have to do anything special).
Now go down the list of add-ons one by one and diable any that you don’t need loaded when you run IE. To disable, select the Add-On by clicking on it, and then choose the Disable Radio Button at the bottom left of the dialog box.
Once you are done disabling the ones you don’t want, you can then close the dialog box by clicking “Ok”. And then you need to close and restart IE. When you do, you should be able to see a noticable improvement in performance and load times.
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December 11th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Although I knew about how to disable add ons,I’m concerned about how to delete the add-ons or uninstall the add-ons.Is it a very good idea to completely reinstall the IE 7 after removing it’s contents completely?
December 11th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Well, each one would have a different way to uninstall it. Some may have an uninstall program. Others may need to be uninstalled manually.
I like to leave them disabled because then I can turn them on when I need them.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:12 am
[...] while back, I wrote about the steps I took to speed up a really slow IE7 installation that I had on my laptop. Although I use Firefox most of the time (though I am not very [...]