Sometimes your web browser starts behaving strangely, it may be a sign your browser has been hijacked. Malicious software ( malware) can take control of your web browser and change your home page, redirect your search results to malicious sites, or you face with a barrage of popup ads.Malwares are often bundled with browser hijackers. A browser hijacker is a type of malware program that alters your computer's browser settings so that you are redirected to Web sites that you had no intention of visiting.It alter your default home pages and search pages. The hijacker can modify , control and redirect your search results and ultimately he can collect your personal information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card and banking information.
One of the easiest way is to block unwanted websites by modifying machine’s HOSTS file .What is a Host file? In a simple way Hosts file is like an address book.It is a common part of an operating system's Internet Protocol (IP) implementation, and serves the function of translating human-friendly hostnames into numeric protocol addresses, called IP addresses, that identify and locate a host in an IP network(Wikipedia).One of the feature of the HOSTS file is its ability to block other applications from connecting to the Internet, providing the entry exists.You can use HOSTS file to block ads, banners, 3rd party Cookies, 3rd party page counters, web bugs, and hijackers
You can search the Host file in WINDOWS\system32\ directory.
Open the host file in notepad and to block a website input an entry in the host file.If you want to block ad.doubleclick.net just enter 127.0.0.1 as an IP address then type ad.doubleclick.net in the host file.Each entry should be placed on an individual line. The IP address and the hostname should be separated by a space or a tab. In this way, you can block any given website by just pointing it to the IP address
127.0.0.2 www.link-assistant.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
When the browser hijacker or you will try to open the ad.doubleclick.net , you will see a blank page.
The IE Care is a small free tool that will repair IE faults, clean temporary files, cookies and history and keep the web-surfing secure.With this you can restore missing IE title bar, restore links text in IE toolbar and clean plug-ins in IE context menu .By fixing such errors your Internet Explorer will be more stable.You can also fix some some other areas of your Windows such as restore title bar of Outlook express, restore hidden disk volume and restore folder options .
IE Security Shield of IE Care keep your web surfing secure. You can either turn on or off this feature at any time. When you turn of this feature, IE care will take over the control on hosts file in system,so that changes to it are automatically blocked.Repair and cleaning section display have various items with checkboxes for easy selection and each option can be selected separately.
SF IE Restorator is a small utility for troubleshooting Internet Explorer issues. It will Flush DNS, re-register .DLLs for Internet Explorer.It will reset IE to default settings and reset Winsock.It is compatible with Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7. If you have .NET Frameworks 3.5 installed ,it will work with other operating system .
Some Antivirus / Firewall might detect SF IE Restorator Tool is Trojan its just a false positive because the publisher is unknown. Nothing to worry it won't harm your Computer.Before running the Reset Winsock make sure you close all applications first since it will restart the computer.Also make sure when you open the application your Right Click on the icon and click Run as administrator.
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Microsoft has provided IE9 Platform Preview to try new features and capabilities to developers and users who want to try it.Beware the preview is only geared at developers and there's no address bar (you have to go to the "Page" menu for that.).It will only run on 32-bit or 64-bit editions of Windows Vista SP2 or later or Windows 7. Vista users also need to have Internet Explorer 8 and DirectX 2D installed before they can install the platform preview.
You can download the Internet Explorer 9 preview from the IE test drive website .
Many people find it annoying to have the address bar above the menu bar,especially those who have been using older versions of Internet Explorer that had the menu bar above all the other toolbars. There's a simple registry tweak that can move the address bar below the menu bar. To do so, follow the steps as mentioned below.
- First, if Internet Explorer 8 is running, close it.
- Click 'Start | Run'.
- Enter 'regedit' in the textbox and click 'OK'.
- Navigate to the following folder in the left pane, 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER| Software | Microsoft | InternetExplorer | Toolbar | WebBrowser'.
- In the right pane look for the entry 'ITBar7Position' and double-click it.
- Enter the 'Value data' as '1' in the 'Value data' box. The default value will be '0'.
BY default, Internet Explorer 8 contains a textbox besides the address bar that has ‘Bing” in it. This textbox can be used to search data on the Internet and acts just like a regular search engine. The reason this feature has been added is to create a quicker means of searching data on the Internet, without requiring the user to visit the particular search site. To search a particular term using this search box, simply enter the search text in the textbox. Click the dropdown box near the textbox and select the search engine and click 'OK'. To add more search engines to this list simply follow these steps:-
- Click the drop-down box near the search textbox that lets you select the search engine of your choice.
- Click 'Find More Search Providers'. The Internet Explorer 8 Add-ons Gallery' page will be displayed with the list of supported 'Search Providers'.
- Click the 'Add to Internet Explorer' button that corresponds to the entry in the list that you would like to add as a search engine.
- A dialog box will appear on your screen with two checkboxes. Select both the checkboxes and click 'Add'. This will set the selected search engine as default.
To change the settings of the search provider, click the drop-down box near the search button again and select 'Manage Add-ons'. Select a particular search engine from the list and select the status. For instance, if you have just set 'Google' as the default search engine and wish to change it to Ask.com then click the entry in the list and click 'Set as default'. For added controls and settings you can right-click the name of the search engine and change settings such as sorting it, copying it or removing it from the list altogether.
IE Tweaker is a freeware tool,which will help you to tweak Internet Explorer.This utility that can help you fix several Internet Explorer issues and you can optimize your browsing experience.It has a great number of fixes/tweaks ( more than 90) that will help you to enable/disable any options with ease and without getting in to registry. IE Tweaker will be a great utility for those, who don’t want to play with the Windows registry.
Features
- Browsing Options:
· Allows you to disable/ enable Smooth Scrolling, Clear type font, Animation, Sounds, Picture Display, Automatic Image resizing - Clear Junk Files:
· This option will help you to quickly remove all the temporary IE files, cookies, history, passwords, and AutoComplete data. - Tweak IE:
· The Basic Tweaks tab offers you the basic tweaks such as Turn off/on Menu bar, Favorite bar, Tabbed browsing, Full screen mode, Caret Browsing support etc., · The Browser Menus window allows you to disable/enable the Browser Menus · The Toolbars tab helps you hide/unhide the various options on the bars and also the bars itself such as Status bar, command bar etc · The Control Panel window helps you hide/unhide the various tabs in Tools –> Internet Options. · The Advanced tab helps you to Turn off/on various options such as Compatibility view etc., and also allows you to change the IE Title, and Default download directory options. - Restrictions:
· The Restrictions tab provides you various restriction options such as Changing default search provider, Add-ons management, Auto complete features etc., · The Settings tab restricts the users to change various settings. · The Security window allows you to enable/disable options such as InPrivate Browsing, Filtering etc., - Repair:
· The Repair menu option provides you various options to repair/fix various issues that you have with Internet Explorer.
IE Tweaker | 152KB | Req:IE 8 & IE 7 & 32/64 -bit Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Win 7 | .NET Framework 3
Microsoft has revised its antitrust-settlement with European Union regulators in response to complaints from browser makers.So Windows users will see a browser ballot screen that randomly lists the icons of the top five browsers upon every launch.Earlier Apple's Safari for Windows browser was slated to receive prominent placement on a "browser ballot".Complaints from Opera, Google, and Mozilla resulted in the change to random listing of browsers upon every launch.
The browser ballot screen will let European PC users download a third-party browser without having to use Internet Explorer . Microsoft’s browser dominance has eroded in recent years. Internet Explorer had 63.6 percent of the market in November, compared with 24.7 percent for Mozilla’s Firefox, 4.4 percent for Apple Inc.’s Safari and 3.9 percent for Google’s Chrome. Opera had 2.3 percent.
You may have experience when you try to update Windows it refuses to do so. The update does not start at the scheduled time of which you have set it to update, and when you do it manually, all you get is the green progress bar going across the time and time again.Sometimes Update History still says they were successfully installed, but if you go into View installed Updates, they are not there .
When you click a hyperlink in an e-mail message or on a Web page, or right-click a hyperlink on a Web page and then click Open in New Window, you may experience one or more of the following issues:
- Nothing happens
- The new window may be blank
- You may receive a scripting error message
- When you use the Print command or the Print Preview command in Internet Explorer, nothing may happen.
- When you try to connect to Web folders, you may receive the following error message: "The current operation could not be completed because an unexpected error has occurred."
- Internet Options Advanced tab is completely blank.
- Internet Explorer About box version information is completely blank.
- Address bar search does not work.
- Unable to type in text boxes in a search engine or website
Recently Windows Club released 3 portable utilities for fixing Windows updates, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Security Essentials errors.
1.Fix WU Utility v1.0
Automatic Updates feature of Windows 7 and Windows Vista stops working due to the Registry clashes or missing DLLs.In case anytime, you find that you are facing any issues in running Microsoft Updates or Windows Updates due to any reasons, run this utility. This utility will re-register a total of 114 .dll, ocx and .ax files which are required for the proper functioning of Windows Updates.On completion, you will see a dialog box: The process completed successfully.
Fix WU Utility | OS:Windows 7 (x86 and x64) ,Windows Vista (x86 and x64)
2.IEFix
It is a general purpose fix utility , which repairs Internet Explorer using IE.INF method and also fixes the application path setting.It also registers the core Internet Explorer libraries properly.
When you run IEFix you'll be prompted for the Operating System CD or the Service Pack Files location.If you're using Windows XP, insert the Operating System CD. For OEM systems, point to the Operating System source path when prompted. If you've applied a Service Pack separately, you need to insert the Slipstreamed Operating System CD (if you have one) or point the installer to the ServicePack source path when prompted Mention the path as "C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386" or "C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles
If you don't have the Windows installation CD, and if the installation source files are not present in the hard disk, you may click Cancel . IEFix will continue with DLL registration part.You have to restart the system.
IEFix |OS:Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
3.Fix MSE Utility
This is a portable freeware utility to reset all the Registry and other settings of Microsoft Security Essentials to default value.
When you are facing any issues in running Microsoft Security Essentials due to any reasons, simply run this utility. This utility will restore all its registry values & service settings to known good defaults, without re-installing MSE. It also re-registers the concerned .dll and .exe files, required to run MSE properly. The utility may take only a moment to run, but rest assured, it does the job! It works on both 32bit and 64bit of Windows Operating Systems
Fix MSE Utility | SysReq: Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0,Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0|OS:Windows 7,Windows Vista,Windows XP
The add-on lets users comment on the website and also allows users to search and 
Features
- View tweets about any webpage
- Join the discussion, reply, retweet
- View the popular pages on a website
- Doubles up as a full blown twitter client allowing you to update, view @mentions and DM as well as new followers and unfollowers
- Supports Firefox, Internet Explorer
Sometimes you want to print a web page, which contains a lots of ads, blank and other junk .It is always annoying to print such web pages. Repeat 'Copy' and 'Paste' to WORD for printing once and again is also cumbersome.
Printee for IE is an Internet Explorer add-on that enables you to print web pages the way you want. You can remove all images and backgrounds, selectively delete page elements such as advertising, navigation menus and other items that you don't want to print, and also change the font, width and page layout style. The result is a cleanly formatted page that only contains the content that you want to print.
Features
- Condense any web page down to just the content you want, no anything useless
- Reducing your paper and ink usage
- What You See Is What You Get
- Support Ecofont, Save 20% Ink
- Send by Mail, Share with friends
- Improve Readability of the Web Page only one key (Ctrl-G)
Restart Internet Explorer after installation, a button with green printer appears on the IE toolbar, as follows:
Internet Explorer contains multiple IE versions, which are standalone so they can be used at the same time. Conditional Comments work exactly the same as in the native versions. The original version number is shown correctly in the User Agent string. The version number can be found in the window title too.
Internet Explorer Collection also includes the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. This Explorer Bar provides a variety of tools which make troubleshooting websites easier. The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is compatible with Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher when using Windows 2000 or higher
Internet Explorer Collection contains the following versions of IE:
- Internet Explorer 1.0 (4.40.308)
- Internet Explorer 1.5 (0.1.0.10)
- Internet Explorer 2.01 (2.01.046)
- Internet Explorer 3.0 (3.0.1152)
- Internet Explorer 4.01 (4.72.3110.0)
- Internet Explorer 5.01 (5.00.3314.2100)
- Internet Explorer 5.5 (5.51.4807.2300)
- Internet Explorer 6.0 (6.00.2800.1106)
- Internet Explorer 6.0 (6.00.2900.2180)
- Internet Explorer 7.0 (7.00.5730.13)
- Internet Explorer 8.0 (8.00.6001.18702)
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THE Internet Explorer toolbar can be customized using the registry editor. A few simple commands can make some unwanted buttons and commands to disappear from the toolbar.
Once you have created these values,double-click them and enter the"Value" as "2".
The following are the value names to hide these buttons.
To make the buttons visible again simply double click an appropriate value and set the value to "1". You can also delete the DWORD value as an alternative.
When you right-click on a file or folder,the context menu that appears displays a list of quick controls. One of these is the “Send to” function that directly copies the file to a selected location.By default, the file cannot be sent to “Internet Explorer”. Internet Explorer
can come in handy while opening files of different formats. With the right plug-ins installed you can open various applications like text documents, PDFs, images and fl ash files. This
saves you the time and CPU memory that is required to open different applications for such files. Here is how you can go about it
Internet Explorer is also capable of playing audio and video files if the right plug-ins are installed. Having a single window to quickly launch files without running the primary applications responsible those files, saves both your time and system resources from being used.
