posted on March 31, 2001 05:07:48 PM new
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010330/tc/microsoft_glitch_1.html tells of another bug in versions 5.01 and 5.5 of MSIE.
DON'T INSTALL BETAS!
**********
This comes from a reliable computer geek I know ... he's not known to exaggerate, so take it seriously. I'm looking for independent confirmation, but Microsoft typically clams up on bug reports until they have fixed it.
To put it simply, if you install the current IE 6 Beta, Outlook 2000 and Outlook Express email programs will be broken. They will no longer display most plain text (non-html) messages: such messages will appear with both the subject line and the message body blank. Since many, if not most, email
messages are sent in plain text this bug effectively makes it impossible to read many of the emails you probably get in Outlook 2000 or Outlook Express. (Warning: it might affect earlier versions of Outlook as well)
Reportedly, Microsoft does not know of a fix or work around. We have also discovered that IE 6 cannot be uninstalled. You can't even get rid of it by reinstalling your previous copy of Windows over it. The only way to get rid of it (apparently) is to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows and all your apps and data to that blank drive.
posted on March 31, 2001 05:11:26 PM new
As soon as I have 50 free hours with nothing better to do than reformat and reinstall all my programs, tweaks, upgrades, and patches, I'll give it a go. NOT!
We're still running Win95b on our main system because of the work involved to do a clean install of 98se. 3 years without a reformat.
posted on March 31, 2001 05:50:14 PM new
If you have Windows ME you can create a restore point before installing the beta (or ANY software for that matter. Then if the new software wrecks your system you can just do a system restore. Fast and easy and it REALLY works.
posted on March 31, 2001 06:33:28 PM new
I have been running IE6 Beta. I am now running the public Beta. I have not had any problems at all with my email using either Outlook 2000 or Outlook Express.
posted on March 31, 2001 06:48:12 PM new
I've considered upgrading to 6.0 because with 5.0, sometimes IE tries to "take over" my system. When this happens the mouse pointer becomes erratic on the screen, as if all the system resources are at capacity. (Which would seem impossible considering I run a 550Mhz pc with 196meg of ram and no other software is running) The only way to cure this symptom is to shut down IE and reopen it. Also, IE does not always respond. For instance maybe you are trying to load a page, but for whatever reason it doesn't load, so you hit the "stop" button - but IE just keeps right on trying to load the page as if to spite you. IE is also the only program I run that crashes about once a week for no known reason - it just stops responding. ctl-alt-del says "IE not responding".
So anyway, is 6.0 supposed to improve on the resource hogging characteristics of its predecessor? If you are using it, what have you experienced?
posted on March 31, 2001 09:09:40 PM new
Remember the Microsoft company logo.....
"Failure is not an option.......It is faithfully included in ALL products
Windows ME caused me a lot of headaches. I (stupidly) got it not long after it hit the shelves. I had several problems with the restore function. It doesn't always work like it's supposed to.....
posted on April 1, 2001 05:22:08 AM new
Question: Are you guys creating the restore points AND doing the restore on a "clean" system?
Before setting a restore point, ALWAYS run Scandisk (and Defrag if you haven't done it within the past week). Next, hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and kill EVERY process except for Systray and Explorer. Then create the restore point. Do the same thing before doing the system restore (If done from within Windows). I have been doing it this way from day one (numerous times on many different systems) and have NEVER had a system fail to be perfectly restored (when a "good" restore point was created before hand). Of course I may have just been lucky...
posted on April 1, 2001 05:53:33 AM new
dubya ... the geek who sent me the warning is an experienced sysop. He didn't go into gory details, but if anyone could bring a system back from the dead, he could.
SM -
Have you recieved any strangely blank emails?
Bigshack -
I use Netscape 4.0, Mozilla (whatever theior last stable release was), and MSIE4.0 because the "improvements in NS5 and IS5 merely added holes for hackers and made them even larger.
That "instability" you are seeing is not cured by IE6 ... they piled on more features, and locked it into the OS even more tightly, so it's unlikely to be better.
posted on April 1, 2001 06:44:12 AM new
abacaxi: Nope. Not a one...
I have found little difference between 5.5 and 6.0.
The only real PIA I found is the "Personal Toolbar" that is actually just a bunch of MSN stuff. I remove it but when I reboot it re-initializes and puts itself back on my toolbar.
My overall impression is that Microsoft is using IE more and more as a way to try to get people to use MSN.
I have also found that the more security software you run the more problems you can have with IE, (and Netscape too). IE and Netscape both seem to be designed to work best if you let it do whatever it wants and allow all of the cookies and crap onto your system. Of the 2 browsers I find IE to be the lesser of two evils.
But as far as my email I have had no problems at all.
posted on April 1, 2001 11:25:54 AM new
I agree with smw. We've been running IE6 this week, and have had no email issues. However, if our ZoneAlarm firewall boots up with the computer, it makes both the Outlook Express 6 email program and the browser crash. If we activate the firewall AFTER the computer boots up, then all is fine. An inconvenience, but otherwise IE6 seems to work fine.
3 years without a reformat.