OPC - Don't install Internet Explorer 6!

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Thread Starter

Mark Wells

Hello,
I thought I'd try and save some time for others on the list. Don't install Internet Explorer version 6 at this time. Many OPC "browsers", or programs that browse OPC items will stop working. There is a good technical support document on the topic at "www.softwaretoolbox.com":http://www.softwaretoolbox.com . If you're like me, you'll have to use your wife's Apple to read the document because Internet Explorer 6.0 wouldn't display anything on my Windows NT box when I went to www.support.softwaretoolbox.com.

Uninstalling Internet Explorer 6.0 is not such a delight either. It may involve having to reinstall Windows completely. The instructions are here:
support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q293907

DLL hell lives on...

Sincerely,
Mark Wells
President
Runfactory Systems Inc.
http://www.runfactory.com
1235 Bay Street, Suite 400
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 3K4
Ph. 416-934-5038
Fax 416-352-5206
 
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Michael Griffin

A rather topical posting, as we were discussing possible future problems with OPC compatability recently. I had a look for the document on Software Toobox's web site, but I couldn't find it. Perhaps I just don't know what search parameters to ask, or perhaps I was looking in the wrong place. I also tried the OPC foundation for information, but their web site seems to be down.

Could anyone tell us if Microsoft considers the problem to be a bug in Internet Explorer, or whether they consider the problem to be in OPC? Since you say "many OPC browsers", I take it that this isn't simply a problem with products from Software Toolbox.

I also noticed while browsing through Microsoft's web site that apparently there are special versions of Internet Explorer 6 which Windows is designed to not let you replace with an earlier version (this is intentional). You can still hack the registry to try to try to get around this, but the idea is that once the new (special) version is installed, you can't go back.

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Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
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Michael,

The link is at:

"http://support.softwaretoolbox.com/cgi-bin/swtbsupt.cfg/php/enduser/fattach_
get.php?p_sid=klmIjZhg&p_refno=020311-000003&p_created=1015889341":http://support.softwaretoolbox.com/cgi-bin/swtbsupt.cfg/php/enduser/fattach_
get.php?p_sid=klmIjZhg&p_refno=020311-000003&p_created=1015889341

I'm not sure if the link will work, but to find it I went to:

"http://www.softwaretoolbox.com/Tech_Support/tech_support.html":http://www.softwaretoolbox.com/Tech_Support/tech_support.html

Then clicked on "Find Answers", then used the search text "Explorer 6".

I went to the OPC website and it stated that the results of their January OPC Interoperability workshop haven't been posted. This is when the problem was brought up by "several OPC Foundation members."

Sincerely,

Mark Wells
President
Runfactory Systems Inc.
http://www.runfactory.com
1235 Bay Street, Suite 400
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 3K4
Ph. 416-934-5038
Fax 416-352-5206
 
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Diana C Bouchard

These problems are not unique to IE 6, although they seem to be getting worse with each subsequent version. A couple of months ago, before I reformatted my disk and upgraded my home computer from Win 95 to Win 98, I had a nightmare time trying to get rid of a bad install of IE 5.5 that hung up when it tried to access anything but its home page. You can't use the normal "add/remove program" procedure with Internet Explorer (I'm sure that's intentional). When you try, the closest thing to an uninstall in
the resulting dialog box is "revert to previous version of Windows". Now that's something I wouldn't want to click without a full image of my hard disk on backup media plus a day or two to put my computer back together.

Not only that, most other programs that wanted to use a browser would access the corrupted copy of IE 5.5 rather than Netscape Communicator, and
hang up my machine.

Now my home computer has Win 98 and IE 5.5 and works fine. But I see no reason to "upgrade" to 6.

Diana Bouchard
Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada (Paprican)
Pointe Claire, Quebec, Canada
 
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kalpak dabir

some of the software experts I know depend on a simple thumb rule "dont use a microsoft product till at least SP2 of it has been released" and "avoid x.00 of any product".
 
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Michael Griffin

Thank you. It turned out the problem was I had to turn on Java Script in my browser before the search engine would work properly. With Java Script off, it just spewed out either random results or no results, but gave no reason why.

To continue with the original discussion, interestingly enough the problem only occurs with Windows NT or Windows 2000, but not Windows 98 or XP. I had thought it a bit odd that we hadn't heard any complaints from people who had Windows XP, since it comes with Internet Explorer 6.

I hear more complaints about new versions of Intenet Explorer clobbering other programs than all other DLL problems put together. I had an earlier version which caused problems with Autocad. I use Internet Explorer at work, but at home I always avoided it since I just didn't need the agravation it causes.

I guess the moral of the story is, don't use the latest version of Windows or Internet Explorer if you can avoid it. Smaller software companies just
don't have the money to properly test their software with all the different combinations of Windows version, service packs, and the side effects from Internet Explorer. Windows isn't really a single operating system. It's actually a collection of closely related operating systems which have to be tested separately.

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Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
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Hello Michael,

The problem arises from the installation of a new Actxprxy.dll when IE6 is installed. This DLL provides marshalling support for the IEnumGUID
interface which is required by the OPC enumerator (opcenum.exe). Most OPC client applications will provide server browsing by two methods. This first requires the OPC Enumerator, which gets "broken" by the installation of IE6. The second is a brute force registry probe. This
technique will still work.

The OPC Foundation has initiated action to rectify this problem by working to develop a new OPC Enumerator that does not have the
Actxprxy.dll dependency. I'm not sure, however, when this work is slated for completion.

Best regards,
Gord Ellis

==========================================Gord Ellis, P. Eng.
Northern Dynamic Inc.
J103-155 Frobisher Drive
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2V 2E1
Tel/Fax: (519) 725-2071/2072
www.nordyn.com
 
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Gord Ellis wrote:
> The problem arises from the installation of a new Actxprxy.dll when IE6 is installed. This DLL provides marshalling support for the IEnumGUID
interface which is required by the OPC enumerator (opcenum.exe). Most OPC client applications will provide server browsing by two methods. This
first requires the OPC Enumerator, which gets "broken" by the installation of IE6. ...<

This sounds like a textbook example of "DLL hell", and I'd have thought Microsoft programmers would be beyond that at this point. Did they overlook some minor thing to cause this? Was it a necessary change? What's the problem with maintaining compatibility with previous versions? I guess you just have to wonder, and to rely on this sort of random alert to avoid
falling victim. Amazing there's no mechanism in place to detect and/or warn of impending doom when IE6 is installed. Too bad one can't see how
they screwed up (or why they had to make such a change) by looking at the code. Is it unreasonable to suppose that other people might be able to offer ways to fix the problem if they could see the code?

Ken Irving
 
Hello all,
I was wondering why my browser would not display anything; I thought I was using white over white until I came across this article; thanks a lot.
 
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I want to uninstall internet emplorer 6.0 from my universe. I am running Windows XP and have every update that came out. I went into add/remove programs, and its not there, after reading some issues, and web sites, i have determined that I have to unistall some sp or hot fix to do this. I am unsure of what one to unistall because there are so freaking many. I NEED HELP I am so tired of pop ups that it sends. NOW if anyone can tell me how to get rid of the pop ups then I am in business. I have pop up stoppers, and IE is npot even open and they still freakin come. I am connected to the internet via a dsl and I am fed up and frustrated. I went to my program folder and into ie and tryed to delete the folder, but alas, it wont let me. Someone please HELP ME
 
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Hi Diane

No problem! According to MS, you can't uninstall exploder, it's an integral part of the OS ;^) And those people paid good money to get to you with those pop ups. So your wishes are irrelevent.

But, all you have to do is install and use Mozilla. It actually does eliminate the pop ups. Apparently the Mozilla folks don't get a share of the pie.

I myself would recommend you install Linux as well, to eliminate the rest of the MS Mail Miseries. But Mozilla works on Windows from what I hear.

Regards

cww
 
I suspect your problem is not all related to IE6 as I am using IE6 and spend an inordinate amount of time on the net, and don't have this problem. I use a program called Spybot search and destroy to eliminate the kind of abuse
you are talking about, the first use of this program was quite enlightening, it removed about 300 web bots and spiders and other tracking devices from my machine, I thought it would stop working if all this was "fixed" so I did one at a time, there is an undo feature, well after item number 20 or so I started to go 10 at a time and by the time the first 100 were done, I had enough confidence to trust it and removed the rest, no problem and no popups
anymore either.

By the way the machines in my environment, and there are several, all run IE6, they are either on SP4 or SP3 of Win2K, some programs like PCS7 and Archestra advise against SP4, and in addition to the Archestra OPC server I
also use Simatic Net OPC for Ethernet, for Profibus, Inat OPC server, Kepware OPC server and another one on my simulator PC which name escapes me just at present, no interaction with IE6 has ever been observed.

Good luck
Donald P
 
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Michael Griffin

I don't know if you are a regular Automation List reader, or if you happened here by chance while searching for a solution to your problem. However, I think your problem is more than we can expect to solve by e-mail. Perhaps though, I can offer you a bit of advice. I hope this is useful to you.

It sounds as though your computer may have a bad case of spyware. A lot of the "free" Windows software come with hidden payloads of programs that hijack Internet Explorer and send pop-ups, re-direct you to different web sites than the ones you asked for, and send secret reports on your internet surfing habits to marketing companies. Spyware is often contained in things like free toolbars for Internet Explorer (including ironically, in some pop-up blockers), and some P2P software.

There is software available to get rid of spyware. The name Adaware comes to mind for one. Some of the newer anti-virus software may possibly come with optional spyware scanners as well. If you do a web search on "spyware" you will probably come up with a lot of useful hits which can take you further.

Getting rid of Internet Explorer itself is not so easy. It's not a conventional application, but rather is knitted right into Windows itself. You should however be able to download the Mozilla web browser and e-mail program. If you use these instead of Internet Explorer and Outlook, you'll be a lot safer from a repeat performance in future.

I can understand your frustration. Lots of other people who use Windows have similar problems as well as viruses, keyboard loggers, spam proxies, and zombies.

--

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Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
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Mike O'Connor

Diane, I know this is getting a bit off the topic of OPC & IE but have you tried an Ad removal program such as Ad-aware? Just go to http://www.lavasoft.de/ and try their free version and it may solve your ad popup problem.
 
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Peter Whalley

Hi Diane,

The Google Toolbar incorporates a popup blocker. Just go to http://toolbar.google.com/ download and install. It's handy for Google searches as well.

Alternatively, Norton Internet Security has popup and add blocking and is strongly recommended (or some similar alternative) if you are on a permanent Internet connection.

You may also have installed GAIN (Gator Advertising and Information Network) when you installed some other "freeware". GAIN is an absolute PITA and will open advertising windows happily all day for you. Check in you list of installed programs. Getting rid of it can be difficult unless you know what it came with because you have to uninstall that first. There are a number of software packages around for detecting things like GAIN and attempting to remove them.

Google "add blockers" and "Popup Blockers" and you should be able to find suitable programs to get rid of the annoyances.

Regards

Peter Whalley
 
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marc sinclair

Hi,
easy , ignore IE and install mozilla firefox - download adblock as well and you can even rid yourself of all those annoying google syndication
links too.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

If all you use your machine for is word processing and browsing then ditch windows altogether. Try something like mandrake linux

marc sinclair
 
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Matthew Hyatt

To all who are bashing Windows -
I run XP Pro, IE6, and most of the other latest Windows applications (Office - Word, Publisher, Front page, Excel, ect.) - no problems, no crashes, no freeze ups, no POP-UPS.

I also run Norton Internet Security and Anti-Virus, I have not installed any of the latest and greatest XP updates (not even the SP's) - my box is clean and runs great, I get no POP-UPS at all, no ads, no spyware, no bugs!

So, to all who bash Windows, Lay off it! Perhaps you should spend time doing some homework and less time bashing a product that is very stable, used around the world and has great technical support. Anyone who thinks Windows is so bad, should come out and see my box, it is rock solid - 24/7/365 and online 24/7/365.

To be upfront, I am sick of the Windows bashing, I have had lots of bad experiences with Linux boxes, but I do not bash the product or the developers. Like your mom use to say - "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"! If your so unhappy, go to a MAC or Linux and good luck finding all of the drivers, and other applications to run in those environments.


MJH
 
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In my expereince, windows has gotten progressively more stable and easier to use, both of these attributes are positive.

My laptop runs w2k and its been quite a while since it gave me any serious problems, although a few years ago it refused to boot up at all due to some wierd windows problem solved only after much annoyance.

My Pc at home was upgraded from a buggy and unstable w98se to wxp and I am quite happy with the results. I still reboot it occassionally but I can't recall if it has ever itself actually crashed, although sometimes errant programs crash, but I don't recall them taking xp with them.

I suspect a lot of the reason linux fans have good luck with linux has to do more with the relative level of skill of the operator than anything else. I would guess most linux users have a higher level of computer savvy than the average windows user.
 
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