Today, I was trying to run some selenium tests on Internet Explorer 8 and got another “This is why I hate Internet explorer” problem. All the selenium tests work fine in Firefox but as soon as I started running them in Internet Explorer, lots of javascript error popups started coming up. The popups were blocking the selenium tests and there was no way I could prevent those popups. In fact, this trivial problem blocked me for a day and was driving me crazy. And when I got through it at last, I thought what the fuck? I won’t let this stupid thing waste someone else’s time again. That’s why I’m writing this post so that you don’t get stuck like me again.

Well, it started with me migrating my selenium tests to webdriver. I had to migrate to webdriver (selenium 2.x) from selenium 1.x because file upload doesn’t seem to work properly (again in Internet explorer) with selenium 1. That leads me to another post – How to automate file upload in Internet explorer using selenium? But that’s another day. For now, let’s focus on preventing those javascript error popups.

How to prevent/disable javascript error popups in internet explorer?

It seems there are lots of information out there in Google on how to prevent / disable javascript error popups but none of them really worked for me. Some of them are simple settings change in IE but for some reason, all those instructions didn’t help me in any way. But finally, I got this worked when I reset the IE Settings. So, here we go all the steps I followed in order to disable those freaky javascript popups.

1. Disable script debugging – I tried disabling the script debugging option with no use. Well, if you want to, you can disable script debugging by opening Internet Explorer -> Tools->Internet Options -> Advanced and checking the “disable script debugging” option there.
2. Disable JavaScript error notification (both manually & using Microsoft fixit) – I tried this too but in vain. You can disable the error notifications by going to Tools->Internet Options -> Advanced and unchecking the “Display a notification about every script error” option. Or if your don’t want to do it manually, you can use the Microsoft fixit wizard available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822521 or follow the manual steps there
3. Reset IE Settings – This was the last resort and it did solve the problem. The downside is that all IE settings are lost and you might not want it. But as I said, if the above steps didn’t work and you are ready to lose your IE settings, you can reset the IE settings to disable/prevent those crazy javascript errors. Well, you can find more info on the resetting procedure at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737/ln.

Well, with these steps, I was able to get rid of those annoying popups. If you are facing this issue, try these out and let me know the results.

From the comments from my readers, it seems many people are having problems finding drivers for their Compaq Presario Laptops. Considering this problem, I’ve finally decided to write up a post on drivers for Compaq Presario laptops. Finding the drivers for Compaq laptops is certainly a problem for most of the customers. I myself had faced this problem once but a after a little digging up, I found a way to find the drivers. And here I am – sharing that technique with you. Continue Reading »

Orkut is a great site to hang out with friends or find new friends on the internet. It is very popular in India and many other countries of the world. However, some people might want to block orkut in their PC. This may be due to many reasons and I’m not discussing it. Whatever the reason may be, if you want to block orkut, you can follow the following steps: Continue Reading »

The main attack of many viruses of the windows OS is on its registry. And therefore, many problems caused by a virus can be solved by editing the windows registry. However, viruses have started to disable regedit – the windows registry editing tool and therefore leave the user no option. But there are ways to enable the windows registry tool which I’m going to discuss below. One can follow any one of the following ways if there registry has been disabled by a virus: Continue Reading »

Very unnaturally, my computer was disconnecting from the internet automatically again and again since yesterday. I have vista ultimate in my system and I have never had this problem before. So, I was searching on the internet for how to solve this problem but I was disappointed at first. But finally I came to this solution. However, I’m sure that solution only applies to problems which occur in the following manner.

Problem Statements:

• Connection to the internet is lost after a certain period of time.
• Connection to your network is also disconnected.
• There is no problem with the modem or anything and the internet is working properly in other OS like windows XP.
• The disconnection problem is gone for a while after a restart or a standby mode but is disconnected shortly after that.
• There is no problem with the hardware or the Internet service provider.

How to solve this Problem?

The problem is because the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service is on and there’s a bug in the windows vista you are using. However, this problem has been removed in the latest service pack 1. So, you can follow one of the following steps:

1. TURNING OFF INTERNET CONNECTION SHARING (ICS) SERVICE: To turn off this service, go to START->RUN and type “services.msc” without the codes and press enter. Then in the services column, find Internet Connection Service and right click on it and choose “Properties”. In the Startup type option, choose “Disable”.
2. DOWNLOAD SERVICE PACK 1: This problem will be solved by downloading the latest version of service pack 1 for windows vista. You can download the latest Service Pack 1 here.
3. DOWNLOAD HOTFIX: Windows has released a hotfix for the problem and is available here.