Problem with IE7 Address Bar

[homestarmy]

I'm at a friend of mine's house and they're having an issue with IE7 on XP.

When the address bar drops down, it goes blank after a few seconds, and often times it shows random characters (not consistent though).

Another person had the same problem, but no fix was listed, and I can't find one anywhere.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewth...cfm?qid=1420726&page=6

Any idead on this one?

 

[Quiksilver]

Uninstall IE7 and re-install it with all updates?

 

[corkyg]

Here's a quirk. If you have XP SP3 installed, and IE7 was already installed, it is no longer uninstallable. You have to first uninstall SP3. That was a real Microsoft gotcha.

Anyway - I had put in a lot of work moving to a larger HDD, and I had that situation. My IE7 was broken and I could not fix it. What to do?

I then found that IE8 Beta was available for download, etc. Hmmm! I pursued that track, and installed IE8. It fixed the problem completely.

BTW, IE8 is pretty nice. The Links bar was replaced with a Favorites toolbar. Tabbed browsing was refined, and new feeds and services are available.

Yeah - it is Beta - but it works fine for me, and I figure upgrades to the final will take cared of the problem I had with IE7.

I wish I had known about the IE7 uninstall barrier before installing SP3. Had I uninstalled IE7 and then put in SP3, I could have then installed IE7 and it would be uninstallable. Microsoft slipped that one by me.