recomended IE7 security settings

I am experiencing significant slow down with IE 7. (with Windows XP)
The malware forum gave me a clean bill of health.
I'm now looking for the recommended security & privacy settings for IE7.
Also, is there a list of add-ons that I should disable or eliminate if I find them?
Thanks for taking a look

 

I wouldn't use IE at all. In fact, I DON'T use IE at all. There are several, far superior browsers that are faster, use less memory, and are more secure . I'm pretty sure everyone knows about Firefox, which is my default browser, but I also occasionally use Opera, and Pale Moon as well. Chrome is popular, but I haven't tried it. Have a look for yourself the many choices and options you have :
http://majorgeeks.com/downloads5.html
Since IE is still the most widely used browser (last time I saw stats on it) most malware that prey on browser flaws are geared to exploit IE. Other browsers would not fall victim to these particular forms of malware.

 

agreed. but I still need IE to test websites since so many others do use IE.
Can you suggest a website that provides recommendations?

 

I thought of IE8 as well, David, but it looked to me as if IE8 is only for Windows7, and it appears that Somemelvin1 is doing work that requires IE7 .

 

Per your suggestion, David, I reviewed the add-ons site. I then disabled most of the add-ons and IE is running smoothly again.

Thank you both for your help.

 

IE8 works just fine for XP and XP 64bit

 

Are there any disadvantages to using IE8 over IE7?

Also, I have a yellow pop-up box in the lower right hand corner saying: "Symantec Antivirus Auto Protect is Disabled". It pops up and disappears after 5 seconds or so. When I check, the auto protect is still running. Any suggestions?

 

Greetings, Somemelvin1.

A Google search for "Symantec Antivirus Auto Protect is Disabled" produces a myriad of results, but most seem to be centered on a trojan infection or a corruption within the Norton A/V program itself. Since your machine appears to be clean, I would suspect a problem with the Symantec software.

What version are you running? You might consider going through any Live Update scans that are offered - maybe even a reinstall of the software.

 

Greetings Caliban and thank you for your advice.

I am running program version 10.1.8.8000
I did update a live update with no luck.
(FYI, I have 2 accounts on my system.)

In addition to the yellow pop-up box, I now notice that I can no longer uncheck the "enable auto-protect" for longer than 3 seconds before it reverses. I do know that this was working last week, as I disabled Symantec in order to successfully execute my malware tools.

Could this be related to flushing my restore points?

 

For the typical user, I see no disadvantage. But, since you're testing web pages, the ideal situation for you would be to have the capability of testing your pages in both IE7 and IE8. But, if that's not feasible, i.e. you don't have two computers, then I think I'd probably upgrade to IE8 since it's been around a good while now.

 

I am unfamiliar with the Norton products (never used them), but from what I understand you may have a corrupted virus definition file or the virus definitions have failed to update.

I have no idea how to address this problem, though, if Live Update can't fix it. Again - an uninstall/reinstall of the software might help.

There is a member of Major Geeks named Michael York who works with Symantec - maybe one of the moderators can get in touch with him and steer him to this thread.

 

IE8 does offer the capability to simulate testing in some earlier versions of Internet Explorer.

By going to Tools > Developer Tools and selecting Browser Mode: and Document Mode: you can test a stored HTML document on your hard disk or other media or any web site.
You can even simulate IE6 rendering by selecting Browser Mode: Internet Explorer 7 and ALSO Document Mode: Quirks Mode.
It's not Exactly the same, but it is pretty close. :cool

FYI, I have IE8 installed with Windows XP SP3 and it works fine.

Testing Browser and Document Compatibility Modes with the Developer Tools