Internet Explorer 8
Like most Web browsers, Internet Explorer 8 has add-ons. But sometimes you may want to get rid of them, even if just temporarily. IE 8 has made it easier to disable and enable your add-ons. Here's how to do it.
Let's say you have the Google Toolbar running in IE 8. You should see an X to the left of the toolbar. It's the familiar X that usually means you can close something. In this case, you'd be right to guess that. Click that X and you'll disable the toolbar.
Now that can be dangerous if other add-ons rely on the one you're disabling. So IE 8 gives you a lovely list of any dependent add-ons and the option to disable them at the same time. Once you've made your selections, press the Disable button and the add-on will disappear.
What if you want it back?
- Go to tools and select Manage Add-ons.
- Select the type of add-on, in our example from above, it would be a toolbar.
- Scroll down until you find your toolbar. And press enable. IE 8 will suggest re-enabling any related add-ons you disabled earlier.
- Press enable again, then press close.
In the case of the toolbar, even though I had enabled it, it still didn't show up. I had to go to View, select toolbars and select the Google Toolbar to make it viewable.
If you want to browse through all the add-ons available for IE 8, visit www.ieaddons.com.
Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7, along with most browsers, work with other software programs that provide features in the browser like video viewing, photo editing, etc. These programs, called add-ons, are very small and work very closely with IE. Sometimes add-ons can cause problems that prevent Internet Explorer from displaying web pages properly and may even prevent it from starting up correctly.
Since it's often difficult to tell which add-on is causing a problem, you need to disable each add-on, one by one, until the problem goes away. This is a very useful troubleshooting step when solving a wide variety of issues.
Here's How:
- Open Internet Explorer 7
- Choose Tools from the menu
- From the resulting drop-down menu, choose Manage Add-ons, followed by Enable or Disable Add-ons....
- In the Manage Add-ons window, choose Add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer from the Show: drop-down box
Internet Explorer 6
If you surf the web often, you may have come across various extensions to your web browser such as toolbars, extra link buttons, etc. Or, perhaps you have new buttons and toolbars on Internet Explorer 6 appear without warning and would like to remove them.
If you want to quickly remove these add-ons to your browser without having to go through the "Add/Remove Programs" routine, just
- Click the "Tools" menu and choose "Internet Options".
- Click the "Advanced" tab on the multi-tabbed dialog box that follows.
- Scroll down underneath "Browsing" until you find the checkbox "Enable third-party browser extensions".
- Uncheck this box and press "OK" to close the dialog box.
Finally, close all Internet Explorer browsers and restart them. Voila! The extra toolbars and buttons should now be gone.