IE 8 slow? This tweak won’t help.

Hi Rafael…..

I don’t know about speed, but it made my IE8 work again!

I have Windows 7 beta, installed as an upgrade over Vista, and IE8 beta. IE8 was getting continuous ‘C++ Runtime Library Errors’. I can’t upgrade IE8 to the latest release as it isn’t for W7. So I continued to use Firefox, until I saw this suggestion. Did the regsrv32 and restarted and was amazed that the IE8 continuous restarting was immediately resolved.

So it affected something!

Regards………Vincent

Wow…. You seem to have been quite busy the past few days…
I shall have to add this to the list of things that doesn’t do what people say it does, on that list: Windows ME, IBM “Deathstar” hard disks, and Dell systems from 2002-2004 era =)

The speed increases they noticed were likely because IE’s binaries were cached in memory from the last time they had been run, thus they didn’t need to be loaded from disk and it started up faster.

I had a bit of a Firefox problem where Firefox was taking 30+ seconds to launch and 10+ seconds to shut down. This means if I closed Firefox and saw a link in IRC, it would take at least 40 seconds to get the browser back open so I could view it. Not good. Chrome’s < 1s startup time easily beat out Firefox and all its feature set.

Eventually though I came back to try and debug this problem. I build a quick and dirty benchmark tool in .NET to launch Firefox and wait for the window to appear, and then display the time. Then it would automatically close the window and time the shutdown time. I ran the benchmark a few times every time I made a change to my Firefox profile to get a rough idea of the effect it was having.

Eventually I tracked the main problem down to Adblock Plus eating up 11 seconds of startup and 6 seconds of shutdown time. Turns out it was some corrupt settings or something, combined with poor coding I guess. Deleting the settings cut down the time. The rest I got rid of by disabling extensions and cleaning my profile. Still is 6 seconds startup though which is annoyingly long now that I use Chrome.

Vincent: regsvr32 takes immediate effect and does not require a reboot. It would have affected the next time IE was run (if regsvr32 was called when it was running IE might have had to be completely closed first). It’s likely some other factor that fixed it… Windows Update in particular will patch system files when you reboot.

It’s also possible your problem with IE8 was only limited to a single Windows session and thus disappeared when you rebooted. Simply rebooting fixes far more Windows problems than you’d think.

AFAIK Ed wasn’t claiming this would speed up everyone’s IE8 installs; he was saying that some people have broken/slow IE8 installs and this seems to repair them.

I don’t know who is right here but isn’t comparing the registry before and after pointless unless you were seeing the problem to start with?

Presumably, if it does fix something and isn’t a placebo, re-registering the DLL repairs something that was broken. If it wasn’t broken in the first place then you won’t see a change.

Similarly, unregistering it may break/change more things than were wrong on the affected systems.

In other words, perhaps there are two registry values which should be this:

RegA = 0
RegB = 0

Registering the DLL will get you back to that state, but if you were already in that state then it won’t change anything.

On the slow system something may have done this, where things still work but are slow:

RegA = 1
RegB = 0

If you unregister the DLL then you get this, where things don’t work at all:

RegA = 1
RegB = 1

This is all completely contrived, of course, but it could map to what’s happening. RegA and RegB could be two interfaces that the DLL provides where IE can fall back on the slower one if the default one is not available, but needs at least one of them to work.

It could also be a placebo or have some other explanation, of course. I’m just surprised to see the claim that because nothing changes on one machine it doesn’t do anything. The before & after needs to be done on a broken machine. (And, of course, it’s possible for IE8 to be slow for different reasons on different machines.)

Again, I stress that I’m not saying anyone is right or wrong here.

More important than any performance increase is that it fixes the “open in new window” bug:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/martinpoon/archive/2009/03/20/open-in-new-windows-and-open-in-new-tab-commands-do-not-work-in-internet-explorer-8.aspx

I always doubted the credibility of Ed Top. Wonder how MS made him an MVP and he was even part of those Virtual RoundTable conferences along with Mark Russinovich. Some day he had to eXPose himself.

IE8 is more stable after I ran the fix Ed suggested – faster I don’t know (hard to really judge that without timing specifically before and after anyway), but it doesn’t crash or hang nearly as often which creates the perception of increased speed even if that isn’t the case. Just my experience and observation – but there is a definite reliability improvement.

Straightforward – this DLL registers many different settings. Different settings being missing will break different things. It appears there’s a common piece of software that is breaking one or more settings that IE is relying on to work properly. Re-registering it *will* help if this is your specific problem.

This DLL is not shipped with IE; it is maintained in Windows service packs (XP SP3 shipped a new version). Repairing or reinstalling IE doesn’t help.

I used Heat, from the WiX toolset, to extract what will be registered (XP SP3):

Recently I had a number of weird problems after installing a Java update. I fixed it by running System File Checker (sfc /scannow). The documentation at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa382541(VS.85).aspx states that if a file is repaired, the corresponding registry data is also repaired.

Damn, XML didn’t come through. List of interfaces that could be broken:

IShellBrowser
IShellView
IShellFolder
IPersistFolder
IShellLinkA
IEnumIDList
IShellLinkW
IRemoteComputer
IEnumGUID
IEnumCATEGORYINFO
ICatRegister
ICatInformation
IDockingWindow
IContextMenuSite
IFolderItemsView
IWebWizardExtension
IEnumExtraSearch
IUserEventTimer
IPersistIDList
IItemHandler
IPersistFolder2
IActiveScriptParseProcedureOld32
ITridentEventSink
IItemNameLimits
ISubscriptionThrottler
IActiveScriptParseProcedureOld64
ICDBurnExt
IExtensionsManager
IUICommandTarget
ITimerService
ITimer
ITimerSink
IHTMLFiltersCollection
ITargetNotify2
IHTMLPrivateWindow2
IHTMLPrivateWindow3
IHardwareDevicesVolumesEnum
IAutoplayHandler
IUrlHistoryStg
IEnumSTATURL
IAutoCompleteDropDown
ICDBurn
IAsyncOperation
IUICommand
IShellItem
IFolderBandPriv
IActiveScriptProperty
INetCrawler
IActionProgressDialog
IActionProgress
IBandSite
IImageRecompress
IDiscMaster
IActiveScriptSiteInterruptPoll
IHomeNetworkWizard
ITargetEmbedding
IHomeNetworkWizard2
IHardwareDevicesEnum
IAutoplayHandlerProperties
ITaskbarList
INamespaceWalk
IStorageProcessor
IDeskBandEx
ICompositeFolder
ITaskbarList2
IBindEventHandler
IEnumAutoplayHandler
ILocalCopy
IActiveScriptGarbageCollector
IShellFolderNames
IServiceProvider
IEnumShellItems
IActiveScriptParseProcedure2_32
IQueryContinue
ISynchronizedCallBack
IPropertyUI
IActiveScriptSIPInfo
IHWDeviceCustomProperties
ITargetContainer
IShellItemArray
IHlinkSite
IHlink
IHlinkTarget
IHlinkFrame
ICustomIconManager
IDiscRecorder
ITargetNotify
IEnumUICommand
ITargetFrame2
IShellView2
ITargetFramePriv
IShellFolder2
IExtractImage2
IShellTreeWalker
IShellTreeWalkerCallBack
IDriveFolderExt
IDefViewFrame3
IHWDevice
IDefViewSafety
ICategoryProvider
IEnumDiscRecorders
IFolderFilter
ITransferDest
IPassportWizard
ICategorizer
IImageDecodeFilter
ISubscriptionItem
IActiveScriptParseProcedure32
IPublishingWizard
IDelegateFolder
IUrlHistoryStg2
IActiveScriptError64
IParentAndItem
IDefViewFrameGroup
IModalWindow
IOleDocument
IOleDocumentView
IOleDocumentSite
IEnumOleDocumentViews
IPrint
IContinueCallback
IOleCommandTarget
IActiveScriptStats
IUserNotification
IImageDecodeEventSink
IActiveScript
IActiveScriptParse32
IActiveScriptEncode
IExtractImage
IUrlHistoryNotify
IGUIDFilter
IActiveScriptHostEncode
IFolderFilterSite
IHWEventHandler
ICDBurnPriv
IActiveScriptParseProcedure64
IDynamicStorage
IActiveScriptParse64
IObjectSafety
IIEExtensionsDlg
IProfferService
IHardwareDevices
IFolderView
ITransferAdviseSink
IActiveScriptSiteWindow
INewWindowManager
ITargetFrame
INotificationCB
INamespaceWalkCB
IMapMIMEToCLSID
ICustomizeInfoTip
IActiveScriptSite
IQueryCancelAutoPlay
IEnumDiscMasterFormats
IRedbookDiscMaster
IJolietDiscMaster
IFileSystemStorage
IUserEventTimerCallback
IActiveScriptError
IDeskBand
IUIElement
IDiscMasterProgressEvents
IHardwareDevicesMountPointsEnum
IEnumItemProperties
IEnumSubscription
ITrayNotify
ITransferConfirmation
IActiveScriptParseProcedure2_64

I suspect IOleDocument, IOleDocumentView, IOleDocumentSite and IOleCommandTarget are probably the ones most likely to cause problems, along with IObjectSafety (which IE uses to ask controls if they are safe for scripting and/or safe for initialization).

Not sure why people have to make this personal and call Ed names. He was more than open about this being less than empirical.

@Rafael: I think there’s a lot of potential middle ground here.

1) An interface registration may be broken which causes the program to fall back on a different (perhaps slower or buggy) code path which depends on different interfaces (which may not be broken). Multiple code paths depending on which interfaces are available is a very common scenario with IE in particular and ActiveX containers in general.

2) An interface registration may be incorrect, causing it to still be used but with, for example, the wrong COM appartment settings. Or cause something that should be out-of-process to be run in-process or vice versa.

Probably more stuff but that’s what comes to mind. COM DLL registration isn’t a boolean “broken” or “fixed” situation; there are lots of individual settings that something could mess up and cause a wide range of misbehaviours.

@Rafael – Before I applied Ed’s useless tweak IE8 would take several seconds to load a tab. Now it is very fast. It may not work for you but it certainly worked for me.

Hmm well since it has all those interfaces I guess it’s more likely the “fix” has some merit. I suppose if a specific interface breaks Windows might try to use it and timeout and fall back to some other method of doing the same task which could account for slowdown.

I tried the tweak out of curiosity, no noticeable improvement in speed but then again nothing was broken that I noticed anyways. *shrugs*

Wow when you close a window with tabs in IE8, it asks you if you want to close the whole window, or just one tab. Wow. I thought Microsoft had migrated away from stupid pop up dialogs like that.

@Dan:

“Wow when you close a window with tabs in IE8, it asks you if you want to close the whole window, or just one tab. Wow. I thought Microsoft had migrated away from stupid pop up dialogs like that.”

Did you miss the “Always close tabs” checkbox on that dialog? If you don’t like the dialog just turn it off.

Firefox does *exactly* the same thing.

It’s a useful option for people who are still getting used to tabbed browsing. I turn the dialog off now but I found it saved me a lot when I first switched from IE to FF because I’d instinctively close the window when I was done reading a page, forgetting I had other tabs open.

[Window Title]
RegSvr32

[Content]
The module “actxprxy.dll” was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0×80070005.

For more information about this problem, search online using the error code as a search term.

[OK]

I am using windows 7 7068

Leo: No, Firefox asks if you want to save your session. Set browser.tabs.warnOnClose to true (or check the pref in Options > Tabs), open multiple tabs, and close the window to see this dialog again.

Firefox 2 I believe just asked if you were sure you wanted to close the browser or not with multiple tabs open. Which is the same question just without the inclusion of the session feature.

MS IE on the other hand goes against the established convention of having the window close button closing the WINDOW and asks if you want it to just close a tab instead. I guess it just annoys me when MS goes through all the trouble of setting out UI/UX guidelines that third parties should follow to create a uniform experience between all programs and then MS itself ignores long established conventions like this.

And I didn’t miss the checkbox, my mouse was drawn to it like a magnet. :P

Tonev: Solution: Don’t do it. :P

@Dan: I’m on Firefox 3.0.8 and the dialog just says:

—

You are about to close 2 tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?

[x] Warn me when I attempt to close multiple tabs

[Close Tabs] [Cancel]

—

No offer to save the session. Maybe that’s a separate option or an add-on. From a quick look through the options dialog I can’t see anything to do with session saving in there. Maybe I missed it due to being too tired, or it’s hidden in about:config or it’s an add-on you have installed.

Either way I don’t understand why anyone would complain about something that takes two mouse clicks to turn off.

“MS IE on the other hand goes against the established convention of having the window close button closing the WINDOW and asks if you want it to just close a tab instead.”

If does offer to close the whole window, and that’s also the default (leftmost) option. It also offers to close just the current tab, which makes sense to me. If you’re closing the window then you almost certainly don’t want the current tab (as it’s in your face and you just closed it) but you may have forgotten that there are other tabs hidden there, especially if you have not been using a tabbed browser for long.

Personally I don’t like IE8 and much prefer Firefox but the two browsers seem virtually identical in this respect, and you can turn it off anyway, so it feels like nit-picking to me.

Tonev: 0×80070005 = Access Denied. Try running from an elevated command prompt (right-click Command Prompt and select Run As Administrator).

If that doesn’t work, then likely the keys are only writeable by the Trusted Installer. If that is the case, though, I can’t see how they could have been damaged by a rogue application’s installer, which is my working theory.

Following up again: IE7 and 8 register IShellFolder and IShellFolder2 with a different proxy object, calling itself “IShellFolder marshaler app compat stub”. This is implemented in shdocvw.dll. Re-registering actxprxy.dll breaks this change. I can’t really see the relevance of this, though – IE8’s WebBrowser control is no longer implemented in shdocvw.dll, as it was in IE6, but in ieframe.dll. If this setting is missing, it’s more likely to cause incompatible shell namespace extensions to malfunction.

I did have slow tab opening after installing IE8, but I looked in Tools > Manage Add-Ons, which now shows how long the Toolbars and Extensions took to load. Look at the ‘Load Time’ column. For me, the longest were Sun’s JQSIEStartDetectorImpl (1.15 seconds!), Java Plug-In SSV Helper and Java Plug-In SSV Helper. JQSIEStartDetectorImpl seems to be a BHO to pre-load Java into IE. I don’t use Java much so have disabled it. Much quicker.

The SSV Helpers are ‘Secure Static Versioning’. Basically, a page that loads Java can ask for a specific version of the runtime – ‘Static Versioning’. Unfortunately that means the page can ask for a vulnerable version. The installer does not remove old versions of Java in case you might have a program that relies on it. SSV Helper forces web pages onto supposedly known-secure versions rather than loading the vulnerable version. Again, the better solution is to uninstall the broken versions; you can then disable SSV Helper but you *must* remember to uninstall the old versions every time.

Oh, and these plug-ins, plus a Java optimization service (”Java Quick Starter”) are installed on every Java update. Again, I very rarely use Java so have disabled this service.

its pretty strange that locking of a picture?
why the hell did they want us to stay using the weird wallpaper used by default its really nonsense…

what about people who do not have enough money to buy the ultimate version,
and even worse if the person is is afraid of fish (phobia)?

lol sry wanted to post about locked windows 7 wallpaper. (was a wrong place just noticed now)

The guy that publish this article is crazy. I did this and i didn’t notice any performance improvement. But some annoying things were fixed like “opennig folders in a new window” and “when using ie8, clicked links opens new tabs and it doesn’t work”.

@Noone
“The guy that publish this article is crazy. I did this and i didn’t notice any performance improvement.”

Just because a fix didn’t improve things for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t improve them for anyone.

I don’t think what Ed Bott published is a general “make IE8 faster” thing, nor is it a “fix every single possible problem that could make IE8 slow” thing. It’s a “fix IE8 if it was broken in one particular way” thing.

Running the fix again and again won’t speed things up more and more. That’s obvious. But if that thing isn’t broken in the first place then that’s what you’re doing and apparently being surprised at. If that thing isn’t broken then running the fix won’t speed things up. You’re just setting things to how they already are.

If your IE8 is running really slowly (which you didn’t say, FWIW) then it could be because of some other problem.

My system seemed to hate IE8 and my other browsers did as well until I discovered the root cause of the 1 minute + hang times. I tried many tweaks to no avail until this one. If you look at your restricted sites under options, internet options, security, restricted sites and see alot of addresses in the “sites” list – your problem lies there. IE8 has a bug that really, really slows down the browser with these restricted sites. (Note: All versions of Spybot SD added many restricted sites to this list.) You can go through 1 by 1 and delete them or do a registry edit – tweak. Warning: editing the registry is easy but can be very dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing – back up first. To do this tweak open up the registry using regedit and go to Hkey_Current_User, software, microsoft, windows, current version, internet settings, zone map, domains. This domains key should contain all your “restricted sites”. Simply delete this domains key in its entirety. Then recreate the key under the zone map key. Now you may want to reboot or at least close then reopen IE8 or other browsers that are IE8 dependent. Should now be fast as ever. FixIE8

There are a lot of good ideas here but, no one seems to be mentioning the obvious! Check your add-ons people. First fire up IE8 or with no add-ons. Click start, accessories, system tools and scroll down. If this way launches significantly faster then you have and issue with one or more add-ons. In the browser click tools, then choose manage add-ons. Once open lok all the way to the last column on the right. This is load time. Yes, indeed boys and girls it actually shows how long it takes each add-on to load. Do the math and you may find this totals to a significant amount. Mine added up to more than 3 seconds. That’s 3 seconds added on to the normal start up time. My two biggest culprits? Java and Skype. Each took a full second to load. The next culprits were Windows Live Toolbar at .66ms and Live Search Helper at .33ms for a whole other second.

For myself I chose to disable the Java and Skype add-ons. If I also disable the Live Search my IE8 starts almost as fast as Googles Chrome Browser.

Thanks for the regsvr32 command – What A Diff!

And, Yes, It DOES work!

Well I was one of the people experiencing more than slow load times… My previously stable system hung and crashed repeatedly. CPU and Ram were consumed at an alarming rate when IE8 was running. I ran the “fix” four days ago and have not had one problem since then. I don’t know about your computer at all but…

*shrug*

It worked for me and it’s not a perceived improvement – it’s an actual “no-more-blue-screen-of-death” improvement.

One of my clients started to complain about this problem after I upgraded their stations to IE8. I timed with a stopwatch that it took 42 seconds to load IE8 and then the homepage. After registering this DLL it only took 14 seconds to load IE8 and the homepage.

Never mind what I said. It always takes half a minute or more the first time IE8 is loaded after a system restart. Then after that, it loads as it normally should. The fix did nothing to help the problem.

This Tweak is working for me… perfectly ..but repeat sevral times @ “CMD” prompt as an administrator.

I had very slow tab response in IE8 and naturally, Ed Bott’s workaround had no effect. What did work, however, was UNimunizing IE from Spybot S&D. IE8 is now my browser of choice.

Sorry gang, for whatever reason, it worked for me even with multiple tabs open. Thanks Ed.

I thought it worked. but after a while, same problem. Open multiple tabs and stuck at “Opening….” close that, open a brand new window and it usually works. Seems to hate pop ups from links on other pages. It is really annoying to the point I am ready to remove IE 8 and use something else.

Turning off the ‘Google Toolbar’ add-in fixed my issue.

diabling Java add-in is the only thing that has worked for me. I tried installing the latest version – 6.0.140.8 and that had the same problem

Is it just me, or does it seem like we’re all doing Microsoft’s job for them… while they get paid.. and we don’t get a dime!!!

Yeah after i used unlocker to move my windows/system 32 directory, my computer has ran stable as ever.

As an administrator of over 30 computers and 2 small business servers in just one of the companies i manage IT for (and i have managed over half a dozen for many many years) I have to say that for those pc’s in that company that had no problem running IE8 in the first place, you are quite right, there was no significant difference using his ‘fix’.
HOWEVER the 16 computers that had serious slow-down loading pages / spinning wheel loading time opening new tabs / and almost non-existant open new window commands have all improved drastically running this tweak/fix or whatever you want to call it.
Now you can disagree all you like. But in many years looking after these systems i know when they just need a reboot or an installation is corrupt or even when one of our many users is just trying to run too many programs at one time.
All i know is, there was a problem on a lot of computers, and no problem on others. Using his ‘fix’ and suddenly we have no problems at all.
Suggesting his fix will not help when you are attempting to test it on a machine that you never stated even had a problem with IE8 in the first place is a little short-sighted.
I can understand a few people joining in on a forum and saying they had instant results because of the placebo effect but there are more than a few serious technically minded people that have also found desirable effects from this method.

I also note a few people putting this idea down claiming it never helped them. Some openly admitted they never had a problem in the first place so should hardly be surprised by the non-effectiveness! As for others, well I have to interject that perhaps they have other issues relating to their performance. I find it highly amusing to see several forums where people state it has had no effect fixing their IE8 and shortly after stating the problem has been there since IE7 also.

The short answer is, it doesn’t hurt your system to run this ‘fix’. And more than just a few ‘computer illiterates’ have reported good results after trying it. It was clear that at least on some of our systems that there were issues registering DLL files during the installation of IE8 because they already existed and were not actually ‘installed’ during the IE8 update and that since the apparent ‘fix’ there have been no recurrances of the problems.

Just because you tested it, does not mean you had the particular setup or software / add-ons etc that others have and therefor saw no positive results.

I would be interested to know exactly how many systems you tried this on, what software was installed, which add-ons you use, and especially if you even had an issue with your IE8 before you tried this before you debunk the whole idea.
I for one rarely put down a ‘fix’ or tweak just because it has no effect on any of the many systems i manage until i have at least asked around for a response from others who use completely different set-ups to us.

I have to admit I was not convinced this would work but registering dll’s (providing you can be sure of the source) is not usually a problem so I thought I would give it a go and ……

The fix certainly did it for me
Running IE8 on Windows 7, IE was experiencing the following:

When navigating to a new page error message popped up saying ie was trying to recover the current page on almost every page i tried to open.

Windows update failed to work – every time !!!

Accessing web services from within Visual Studio failed with java timeout errors.

All of these were fixed by registering the dll

I’m still not sure if its the registering of the dll or the process just resets some permissions, but now I can carry on with my Visual Studio development quite honestly I dont really care.

Which ever way you dice it – If it works for you – Just do it!!

I have tried this fix and found no difference. I am running Windows 7 Professional RTM with IE 8. I did find that my slowness problem was with the 32bit version (I should mention that I am running 64bit W7). When I changed to the 64bit version of IE 8 the world opened up. I should also mention, for those that don’t know and if things have changed please correct me, that Windows update will require 32bit version. I did not change my default browser to 64bit but did create a different ICON for 64bit and use that. If I try to do something that I absolutely need 32bit I just use that.
Thanks for the good posts and hope this helps others.
John

i find that IE8 is more stable compared to the previous versions of Internet Explorer, i am pretty much happy with IE8

Add my voice to the chorus of people for whom this worked. Disabling all addons had no difference, but re-registering this DLL sure did.

This was on my development box, so certainly it’s had its share of DLL registering and unregistering over time. To my knowledge I’ve never touched this particular DLL, but this certainly fixed the problem. Now IE is at least 3x faster to load new tabs as before.

Ain’t no placebo, neither.

IE8 was taking 50 seconds to open the application vs. 4 sec. for Firefox. Opening additional pages/tabs were also painfully slow. Running the dll fixed the problem of the slow pages/tabs problem but did nothing to shorten the time it took to oen the program.

Once I disabled the JAVA add-on my opening time dropped to 10 sec.

Me too have solved the problem by disabling the Java plug-in. My version of Java is:

Name: Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper
Author: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Type: Oggetto browser helper
Version: 6.0.170.4
Class ID: {DBC80044-A445-435B-BC74-9C25C1C588A9}
File: jp2ssv.dll
Folder: C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin