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IE6 redirects to Firefox

B

b4u

Golden Member
Hi,

I'm having a strange behavior in Internet Explorer 6 since yesterday. Every time I enter an address, instead of opening the webpage, it just enters Firefox and opens the page there.

I really like Firefox, and it's my prefered choice for browsing, but I need Internet Explorer for Windows Updates and to test webpages I develop.

So I have no clue on what's happening.

One time it opened a page in Firefox, I then switched to IE and hit the stop button, and the address showed something pointing to my local disk, and ended with "shdoclc.dll/navcancl.htm".

Don't know if there is any malware around that does this trick, and need some opinions.

Thanks
 
After checking thoroughly for malware, consider trying System Restore if necessary.
 
You could try uninstall Firefox first and see what it does first. If there is a conflict between two programs, take on out of the picture and see if the problem is still there.

Then reinstall Firefox and see if it still does it. Could be a screw up somewhere in settings.

You may want to see if moving to IE7 will help too.
 
That's strange I have that same issue on my ThinkPad's windows partition. But %99 of the time I am using my Linux partition when I am on my laptop, so I don't think I cared enough to fix it.
 
I'm run mcafee antivirus with no issues detected, also ran microsoft's malicious software removal tool and ad-aware 2007, both with no issues detected, so I believe I'm clean.

I also found this forum message that lead me to think I have some kind of hijack on IE.

Haven't tried anything yet. If I uninstall Firefox, will the settings still be stored? Like connection settings, favorites, etc...?

At first glance I don't want to install IE7, since I have to maintain some webpages which are compatible only with IE6 (for now at least). So a move to IE7 would force me to change other peoples coding to adapt to the new version, which at the time wasn't a priority as I have my hands full of other issues. 🙂

But still I'm starting to think about this alternative as THE solution. Will an update to IE7 overwrite all IE6 files?

Thanks
 
Originally posted by: b4u
I'm run mcafee antivirus with no issues detected, also ran microsoft's malicious software removal tool and ad-aware 2007, both with no issues detected, so I believe I'm clean.

I also found this forum message that lead me to think I have some kind of hijack on IE.

Haven't tried anything yet. If I uninstall Firefox, will the settings still be stored? Like connection settings, favorites, etc...?

At first glance I don't want to install IE7, since I have to maintain some webpages which are compatible only with IE6 (for now at least). So a move to IE7 would force me to change other peoples coding to adapt to the new version, which at the time wasn't a priority as I have my hands full of other issues. 🙂

But still I'm starting to think about this alternative as THE solution. Will an update to IE7 overwrite all IE6 files?

Thanks
Click to expand...


I'm not sure exactly what will happen with the conversion of IE6 to IE7.

However, I do have an answer to your Firefox question. Your settings for firefox are stored in a profile. Most of the time when you install Firefox it will actually keep your profile information.

This is where it should be located:
C:\Documents and Settings\yourusernamehere\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

If you copy this to another location you'll be sure to have it should it dissapear somehow. You can copy these back when you do the reinstall. The profile contains all your settings, bookmarks, extensions, etc. Note that when installing uninstall Firefox and installing a newer version a lot of times the extensions bomb out. They're easy to reinstall and what not, just thought I'd let you know. I've only had that happen 1/3 of the time though.


 
I've fixed it. Here are the steps I took:

1. Downloaded IE7 setup with Firefox, since IE6 was broken;
2. Uninstalled Firefox, just to find that any url opened by IE pops an alert with a message something like "Application not found", as if it didn't find IE libs at all;
3. Installed Internet Explorer 7 (had to do it 2 times, since it gave me a strange error first, but a restart cured it);
4. Executed windows update to put all fixes I was missing (not many);
5. Reinstalled Firefox for proper web browsing 🙂;
6. ... and it it still working after 2 days 🙂.

Now I have Firefox and IE7, and I'll have to live with that. System seems like nothing happened ... which is good, since I don't want to loose time putting an image back and reinstalling my development environment to the present state.

Oh, and uninstalling Firefox didn't remove any settings at all, I even deleted the Firefox installation directory itself (but NOT the FF settings folder under the "C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla" folder).


Thanks everyone for the tips.
 
I have the same thing. The funny thing is that even selecting windows update in IE6 dropdown redirects to firefox- where you get a message that the windows update utility can only be accessed with IE5 or greater. And the IE7 download page is one of the only ones that you are able to access in this screwed up IE6, while all other addresses are sent to firefox??? And this happened after installing a windows update through IE6.

The cool part is that these days you can do "windows update" through firefox and stay away from IE almost entirely (save for the sites that seem to only be well viewed in IE).
 
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