Internet Explorer 8 is the newest release from Microsoft and recently left beta and hit automatic updates. I will be discussing the issues that I have encountered, and the fixes I have found. Additionally, I will include group policy templets to prevent its distribution and a uninstall script to remove it for systems. I came in Monday to find that the software was installed on a spattering of computers across sever different clients (about 250 computers). I spent most of the rest of the week fixing them.

Issues that I have had:

No reboot: This seems to be the most common issue I encountered. If the patch was installed and the computer was no rebooted you will experience things like not being able to type in text input fields. Rundll32.exe memory dumps, and missing menus and toolbars. To fix this rebooting seems to do the trick.

No Header or title in internet explorer: For some reason I have seen this a few times when the computer went from IE6 to IE8 directly. The browser window will not show any title, and will not allow you to open any menus. The fix I found for this is to give the user account local admin rights and login again. Go through the setup wizard and change the rights back again.

Internet explorer will not open after upgrade: I have seen this a few times. First try running the browser as another user. If it opens, try giving the user that is having issues local admin rights. If this does not fix it I found that recreating the user profile works ( I had to resort to this only twice out of 12 browsers that would not open)

Website Incompatibility: MANY products and websites are not compatibly with internet explorer 8. Microsoft chose not to follow internet conventions when developing the browser so there have been a ton of issues encountered. This is actually so prevalent that Microsoft introduced compatibility view to allow people to render websites in Internet Explorer 7. Check out THIS
Spybot – If you have spybot installed on your computer unfortunately it will not work with internet explorer 8. The people at spybot are working to fix this but the only solution I found as of writing this is to uninstall either IE8 or spybot.

ADP – a very common workflow and payroll management provider. If you are using IE8 you cannot log into ADP unless you view the page in Compatibility Mode.

Centricity – A common medical Practice management software, this does not seem to work at all with IE8 installed. I found uninstalling to be the only option.

Solidworks – a Design and CAD application, once installed IE8 will cause web help to stop functioning as well as some other web based services. Uninstalling IE8 seems to be the best option for this as well.

Quickbooks – IE8 will break the web-help application and case older versions of quickbooks to crash on first load. Again until there is a hotfix uninstalling IE is the best option.

General Browsing – About 2400 websites are not compatible with IE8. A bunch of banking sites and smaller sites do not work or allow for login, most of these are fixed with compatibility view. Some big name sites like amazon.com ebay.com and download.com are having issues with the browser rendering. I list of sites that are not rendered correctly is available HERE. 

Options:

Microsoft seems to have messed up again. The browser does not follow conventions, it does not have nearly all the bugs and kinks worked out. It causes a ton of applications and websites to not work, so much so they included a compatibility option out of the box. It seems hardly finished to me.

That said rollback may be a good option for you. Microsoft allows several uninstall options:

Add and remove programs wizard – This will let you remove the browser and all subsequent patches in one wizard.

Restore – Sometimes it is just too messed up, the uninstaller wont work, or something else goes wrong. By defult the install creates a restore point. This may be a option in some situations to rollback the mess.

Login Script: My favorite! This is what I have been using on some domains to remove it.

Kaseya – It for things like this I love kaseya.

Preventing the patch for reaching your system – Microsoft admits that the patch might not be for everyone. Check out THIS. It included a group policy template to prevent the update from installing via automatic updates, and a login script option that can also be used with kaseya.