How To Reset Microsoft's Internet Explorer Browser

If Internet Explorer is your default web browser, or if you are sometimes using the browser on your system, you may come into a situation where the browser is not working properly anymore. It may crash on you for instance, or system settings appear so broken that you cannot fix them by yourself. The latter can happen if your system was compromised by a virus, or if someone used tweaking software to modify Internet Explorer settings.

If you have updated Internet Explorer to a new version on your system, for instance to IE9 on Windows 7, you could try and uninstall Internet Explorer. If you are running the default version, for instance Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, you do not have that option.

Microsoft has created a Fix-It, a small portable program, to reset Internet Explorer settings on Windows systems the script is executed on.

All you need to do is launch the program after you have downloaded it to your system. Follow the instructions until you come to the following screen.

The Reset Internet Explorer Settings Fix It will automatically reset the following:

• Disable Toolbars and add-ons
• Default web browser settings
• Privacy settings
• Security settings
• Advanced options
• Tabbed browser settings
• Pop-up settings

It is furthermore possible to delete personal settings, they include:

• Resets home pages, search providers and Accelerators to default settings.
• Deletes temporary Internet files, history, cookies, web form information, ActiveX Filtering and Tracking Protection data, and passwords.

A click on the reset button runs the process in the background. It should not take longer than twenty seconds before everything has been reset to factory defaults. Keep in mind though that you need to restart Internet Explorer before you see the changes take effect.

If you have selected to delete personal settings as well, you will see the welcome screen when you start Internet Explorer for the first time.

Internet Explorer users can alternatively reset the Internet browser without the Fix-It script. The easiest way to perform this operation is to use Windows-r to bring up the run box on the system, and load inetcpl.cpl from there. This brings up the Internet Properties.

Switch to the Advanced tab and locate the Reset button at the bottom of the page. All Internet Explorer windows need to be closed before you can use the feature. The reset button will display the same reset options as the Fix-It.

Resetting Internet Explorer can be useful in situations where you are experiencing issues that you can manually fix anymore.

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