Google tells users to drop IE6. All I can say is, good riddance! If there is one good thing I can say about IE6 it would be that it’s relatively lightweight, however it looks like Google Chrome might solve that issue.
Posts Tagged: Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer “Remember my password” Checkbox Missing
On my office laptop, I discovered the Internet Explorer “Remember my password” checkbox option was missing. This was quite annoying, as I started using Eclipse’s internal browser to test my development work on the staging server I setup at home. The staging server is protected by a simple .htaccess file, which prompts you for a username/password with a dialog box like the one below:
As you can see, its missing the “Remember my password” option, which means I have to reenter the credentials every time I want to login. After a lot of research on Google, I finally figured out the problem: the Protected Storage service needs to be running. Either I disabled the Protected Storage service or a Windows security update did. Either way, after changing the “Startup type” to Automatic and restarting all IE browsers, here’s how the password dialog looked:
I have a feeling that a Windows, or an Internet Explorer, security update changed the way IE stores passwords. For most users, the update had no effect since the Protected Storage service is set to Automatic by default. But not for me; I love tinkering with stuff. I disabled a lot of unnecessary Windows XP services on my laptop last year to help keep it secure while I’m on the move.
Update:
In the comments, Haiman posted the following alternate fix. Several users reported his fix worked for them, so I’m including it here. (You’ll need to use the registry editor to make this change, Start->Run->regedit.exe, but be sure to make a backup of your registry before fooling around with it!)
Your office pushes out a GPO or registry change to disable users from caching passwords.
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Internet Settings]
Value Name: DisablePasswordCaching
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = default, 1 = disable password cache)
Why I won’t install IE7
IE7 needs Service Pack 2.
Service Pack 2 does horrible things to a computer. For example, I have two computers with the same exact hardware specs. Same services running. The SP2 computer runs MUCH slower than the SP1 computer. I’m not just talking about network speed (I know about the TCP connection limitation in SP2 (from 65k connections down to 10 connections! (and I know about the tcpip.sys hack to fix it)). I’m talking about launching programs, opening my computer, etc. All are much slower with SP2.
So, unless someone can find me an IE7 that runs with SP1, I won’t be installing it. Besides, Firefox does everything I need on a daily basis, and IE6 is there for backup, in case there’s some stupid ASP site that I need to view that just wont work right in Firefox (damn non-standardization!).
