Internet Explorer 8 Forum

Why is this application labelled Silver if it isn't supported and doesn't run at all? There is a third party support package in the new (9.0) version, but it doesn't run for me either. There are no reports here of this working, or even responses, suggestions, or work arounds for those who have already posted. IE8 is now the most installed version of the most installed browser, and as such should be rather important to support. Still, even an honest evaluation of its problems would be nice.

I could get it to run with the 9.0 version and the third party package. I haven't made any other modifications. Although it runs, it is still buggy e.g. it crashes randomly. But that's a start and maybe I can get it a bit more stable.

Leander Tentrup wrote:

I could get it to run with the 9.0 version and the third party
package. I haven't made any other modifications. Although it runs,
it is still buggy e.g. it crashes randomly. But that's a start and
maybe I can get it a bit more stable.

I tried out 9.0.0 for Mac today, but IE 8 still does not work. Regarding the 3rd-party packages, what extra components do you have to install? Or do you mean the related packages automatically installed by IE 8?

Currently my Chinese Traditional IE 8 hangs like this.

RyanLeiTaiwan wrote:

Leander Tentrup wrote:

I could get it to run with the 9.0 version and the
third party package. I haven't made any other modifications.
Although it runs, it is still buggy e.g. it crashes randomly. But
that's a start and maybe I can get it a bit more stable.

I tried out 9.0.0 for Mac today, but IE 8 still does not work.
Regarding the 3rd-party packages, what extra components do you have
to install? Or do you mean the related packages automatically
installed by IE 8?

Currently my Chinese Traditional IE 8 hangs like
this.

My IE8 hangs at the same blank connection page. Can't do anything or go anywhere. This is with Crossover9 using the unsupported install.

I got the same results too, both when I installed using the IE8 exe file from MS and when I installed from under the Unsupported App>Community Supported Application IE8--it shows the blank page. I used Crossover 9 on Mac.

I finally got IE8 to work. See separate thread here or over at WineHQ:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=16041

Thanks adding the RegKey made the browser much more functional.

I installed IE 8 via CrossTie, then added the RegKey noted from WineHQ in the link you provided. That actually made the browser work. I was able to complete the "Welcome to IE 8" process and can browser fine with 1 tab.

Shortly after launching IE 8, I get an error indicating iexplore.exe has crashed. But if I acknowledge the error I can still continue browsing. If at any point I try to launch another tab, then IE will freeze on me altogether.

Are you seeing the same results? Or did you complete additional steps from WineHQ to make IE 8 work better?

Same results here. But if you shutdown IE and CrossOver, things will work better the next time run it. Will still crash occasionally, but not repeatedly.

I think (but am not confident) I have a better sense of what's going on. That is, I wondered why I was seeing a crash message for iexplore.exe, even though I could continue browsing just fine.

From reading through this MSDN blog, it makes more sense now: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/askie/archive/2009/03/09/opening-a-new-tab-may-launch-a-new-process-with-internet-explorer-8-0.aspx

By default, IE 8 will spawn 2 instances of iexplore.exe. 1 instance for the frame (where the HTML renders) and 1 instance for the tab. Given I cannot do anything with tabs, it must be this second instance being used for the tab that's crashing.

I wonder what'll happen if TabProcGrowth = 1 instead of = 0, as originally suggested at WineHQ? I may not get time to test this for a little while, if anyone else does, please post your findings. I'm especially interested to know if it eliminates the extra iexplore.exe process from crashing. Per the blog...

TabProcGrowth =0: tabs and frames run within the same process; frames are not unified across MIC levels.
TabProcGrowth =1: all tabs for a given frame process run in a single tab process for a given MIC level.

Did some more reading...with the TabProcGrowth = 0, only 1 instance of iexplore.exe should be running. Seems though that's not entirely true with what we're observing. With TabProcGrowth = 1, there should be 2 instances of iexplore.exe running.

This site gives a little more detail around the usage of this registry key: http://www.mydigitallife.info/hack-to-launch-only-one-or-limited-processes-of-ie8-regardless-of-number-of-tabs/

A person commented on this article that there is also a -nomerge switch you can feed into IE 8. Might be something additional to play with via CrossOver's "Run Command" function.

Well, I tried using = 1 for the registry key and IE stopped working. Went back to = 0 and at least it works, so long as I disregard the crash message and don't attempt multiple tabs.

Updated Tips & Tricks section with info on getting IE 8 as functional as we know how. Added some info there as well about the behavior we've observed so far. Thanks again Per for posting to Wine HQ for this one! I'll may test IE 8 under some nightly builds down the line to see if IE 8 is gaining more stability. Otherwise I'll definitely plan to do some testing under the next public release to see if/when tips & tricks needs to be revised.