Thursday, March 15, 2007

IE7 Runonce Errors - a solution

You’ve Upgraded to IE7, and it will not load the 1st page?

There are numerous suggestions and fixes supposed fixes for this problem. If you think it’s something you can fix within IE7 itself, forget it. The common name for this problem is IE7 Runonce, and it loads blank blue page after your initial upgrade of IE 6. No amount of rebooting seems to fix the problem, and no changes within IE7 allow you to stop this page from loading.

The source of the problem is not malicious or to cause any problems, it is simply a configuration of IE7 settings. Microsoft wants you to select your default search provider, enable the built in Phishing filter and, and use ClearType font smoothing. These are great options, however you will never see them because the page will not load.

To stop this error, you can perform the following steps:

1) Set your favorite home page in Internet Explorer, under Tools\Internet Options
2) Click Start\Run and type gpedit.msc, then press OK
3) Under Local Computer Policy; select Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer
4) Select prevent performance of First Run Customized Settings
5) Enable this setting, and then select Option 1 to go to your default home page, or Option 2 to get the default Internet Explorer welcome page.

Essentially, this edits a policy on the local computer to prevent any changes to the first run settings. By enabling this setting, you can effectively bypass the runonce page from loading.

You can manually change the Phishing filter under Tools\Phishing Filter\Turn on Automatic Website Checking

Cleartype Settings:
Click Start, click Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
2. On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
3. Click to select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box, and then click ClearType in the list.