Help! IE 9 installed and ACT! won’t work

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For the last couple of weeks, about one out of every five e-mails we receive are ACT! Premium for Web issues caused by Internet Explorer 9.    Things like, “all of a sudden, I can’t get to my database”  or APFW users are getting the “cannot display the page” nasty-grams from Internet Explorer.  What a lot of users don’t understand is that Microsoft pushes updates to your machine, depending on your Windows Update settings, sometimes without you even realizing.  The best medicine here, per the old adage, is prevention.  One of our earlier posts touched on this also -http://famous-loaf.flywheelsites.com/2011/04/what-will-that-upgrade-impact/.  We try to ensure our customers are in the know, but you have things to do, businesses to run, sales to close, and we know computer things happen. 

One thing every Windows user should do is check and set your Automatic Updates.  By default, updates are stealthily applied to your machine.  In the background, your Windows downloads and then applies the updates Microsoft feels are important.  Of course Microsoft doesn’t take into consideration that your ACT!, bank account or Wizard 101 account won’t work on IE 9, or that the SQL update will break your installed version of ACT!.  Check out this Microsoft KB article – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306525 – and then check and edit your own settings.  On my machines, I go with download them, but let me choose which ones to apply.  That way I maintain control of what Windows updates are installed and can be ahead of what it might impact. 

If you’ve updated to IE 9, whether because you wanted the latest and greatest and didn’t think it would be anything but cool, there is still hope.  You can remove IE 9 and go back to IE 8 so that your APFW, and likely other sites, behaves the way you expect.  Here is an excerpt from Microsoft’s Knowledge Base:

To uninstall Internet Explorer

The following instructions apply to both Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

  1. Click the Start button Picture of the Start button, type Programs and Features in the search box, and then click View installed updates in the left pane.
  2. Under Uninstall an update, scroll down to the Microsoft Windows section.
  3. Right-click Windows Internet Explorer 9, click Uninstall, and then, when prompted, click Yes.
  4. Click one of the following:
    • Restart now (to finish the process of uninstalling Internet Explorer 9, and restore the previous version of Internet Explorer).
    • Restart later (to wait until you shut down or restart your computer).
Note

After you uninstall Internet Explorer 9, the previously installed version of Internet Explorer will be available on your computer. It is not necessary to reinstall.

Remember, always look before you leap, even when it’s just leaping to a new computer-related update.