I recently installed the new Internet Explorer 8 to try some of its new features but was soon disappointed. There were many bugs causing many sites to not work and some sites were not being displayed properly. The browser would just crash at times, so I decided to go back to Internet Explorer 7.
I uninstalled IE8 from Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs>Add/Remove Windows components. After that when I tried to install IE7 I was faced with the following message
"Setup cannot continue because a more recent version of Internet Explorer has been detected on this computer".
It turns out IE8 does not get completely unistalled and to completely remove it you need to run the spuninst.exe found at this location: "C:\WINDOWS\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe". Once complete it will ask to restart and after that you can install IE7 once again.
17 comments:
Thanks for the tip. Worked like a charm
You are welcome AnnArborBuck.
How do I reinstall IE7?? I am clueless!!
If you haven't yet, download IE7 from here
very nice concept. BUT after running the add/remove programs for IE8 that folder set is gone. IE8 is still there but no uninstaller. LOVE it....NOT!
I am having the same problems. Microsoft notified me of updates, when i tried to install IE8 it failed saying that a newer virsion of internet explorer was found. Now IE does not work at all. I looked under C:/windows for the ie8 folder but that does not exist. I can find no entried for the IE update in the control panel>installed updates either. I have tried to restore system back to a good restore poing, but I keed getting an error and the restore did not complete successfully. Maybe the IE update was Firefox?
You need to go to Tool > Folder Options > View, and enable "Show hidden files and folders" in order for the IE8\spuninst folder to be visible.
i am running vista and i enabled show hidden files and folders and there is no ie8 folder in my Windows folder... Anything i'm doin wrong?
@Ripcat
Thanks for your help!
Those who cannot see IE8 folder please try as follows in windows explorer:
Click Tool > Folder Options > View, and enable "Show hidden files and folders" in order for the IE8\spuninst folder to be visible
@Dragon_Flame34
I suggest you manually download IE8 and install it. Download IE8 from here
When I go into C:/windows and Click Tools > Folder Options > View, and enable "Show hidden files and folders" a number of hidden folders become unhidden but the folder "IE8/spuninst" is nowhere to be seen. Could it be thats it only created once IE8 is uninstalled and is not normally present? (I haven't uninstalled IE8 yet)
Same thing here. No ie8 folder even tho I have checked show hidden files.
How do I get this POS off my computer?
I try and run spuninst.exe but I get:
"the application has failed to start because updspapi.dll was not found"
ehh
ie8 POS. same issue with roger's.
For those who don't see IE8 folder in WINDOWS, try going to Program Files and renaming or deleting Internet Explorer folder to something else(like old IE) and then trying IE7 install.
This worked for me, but be careful, who knows what dependencies Windows has on that
@Billy G. - thanks.
Nothing worked -- but I figured it out. Cut and paste the \Program Files\Internet Explorer file to your desktop (just in case something gets messed up). Cut and paste the Windows\ie8 file to your desktop. Use Chrome to get the IE8 installation from Microsoft (or get it on another computer and use a USB stick to transfer it) and run IE8 setup. The computer doesn't see ie8 as being installed (since you cut and pasted the Internet Explorer files to your desktop) and goes ahead with a clean install of IE8. Worked for me.
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