Google Toolbar: Uninstalled
I had to make a decision today, and I believe I made the right one. Since I installed the Google Toolbar version 4, IE7 has been wonky. Mainly, submenus have not been rendering properly. I would hit Alt, click View, hover over Toolbars, and the submenu would not appear until I put my mouse within the menu.
I assumed the recent installation of the Google Toolbar was to blame (I’ve been running IE7 longer than most, so I’ve had time to examine its quirks; this was a new one). I disabled Google’s toolbar, and got nowhere, the problem remained. I uninstalled the Toolbar, and it went away.
Considering that IE7 will eventually be a major permanent part of Windows, it has a search bar anyway, and it improves system-wide security, I weighed my options and decided that was more important than Toolbar 4’s features, excellent as they are.
Is anyone else running IE7 having the same problems, and does this solve them? TDavid had terrible black blocks in his IE7, and the only thing I see in the screenshots is a custom skin, the new Google Toolbar and the Alexa Toolbar.
I’ll reinstall when Google fixes the issue. I already miss it, but I’ll live. And I’d miss IE7 more.
Yes, I had noticed this when I installed Google Toolbar on my machine which has IE 7. On some tabs, until a website is loaded the toolbar does not show up. I agree with you that there should have been an option to remove search field as we can default IE to use google search engine. This is great feature of older IE versions.
Comment by Shravan | February 1, 2006
I guess what I don’t understand, Nathan, is why you’re so attached to IE7. I haven’t had a chance to try it myself, but I’m so happy with Firefox… I just haven’t had an enormous drive to try IE7.
Have you tried Firefox 1.5? And does IE7 offer advantages (or avoid disadvantages) compared to FF1.5?
Comment by Adam | February 2, 2006
Forgeting about whether IE7 is a good piece of software, I chose it over the Google Toolbar for the simple reason: IE7 is a permanent part of Windows, or at least it will be. That’s why it stays, since I’ll have to deal with it for a much longer time, making it the more important piece of software to test.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 2, 2006
Currently one of the big advantages I see of IE7 over Firefox is the free up of screen real-estate the new IE 7.0 user interface affords. Firefox’s more standard banded UI takes up an additional 40 pixels.
Comment by Jim | February 2, 2006
So you’re not even using Google’s Toolbar 3?
Can’t see why you don’t just install that one, it only has some minor quirks when combined with IE7.
Comment by Tim | February 2, 2006
I’m sure Google will fix whatever the problem is soon enough, and I’ll just download that.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 2, 2006
I know this is pedantic, but the problem could be IE7? I mean, it IS incomplete, beta software and MS actually does NOT recommend using it for anything critical. There most likely ARE plenty of bugs left, and they could be causing problems with Google Toolbar 4. In other words, IE7 isn’t really FOR casual use, just for people who need/want the latest and greatest, and waiting for the final wouldn’t have killed you, seriously.
EVERY public beta tends to have at leasst one serious or limiting bug (just ask GOOG).
Now, I’m not defending Google Toolbar 4, either. It could as well be the source of your problems and they’ll update it to fix it.
IF it will EVENTUALLY be a permanent part of Windows, then wait until it IS a permanent part of Windows: wait for the version MS will stand behind 100%.
Comment by Jahmal | February 4, 2006
Jahmal, from a web developer standpoint, testing IE7 is very, very important. From a reporter standpoint, there will be more news surrounding IE7, both about the browser (security, compatibility, bugs) and add-ins for the browser than there will be for the Google Toolbar. Besides, Google will probably fix the bug quickly.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 4, 2006
Yes i am facing this problem, I just installed Google beta toolbar, seems its some problem on google’s end as their site still says coming up for IE 7. So I assume they are fixing the issues.
I dont want to loose IE 7 and google the same, i was a very heavy firefox user, and they are still the best though, as they tons of cool tools when compared to IE7, just that IE7 looks more chic, but still they have some problems when i open a new tab as it takes a bit time to paint the toolbar and options.
Comment by Keith Dsouza | February 28, 2006
Hi Nathan,
I’m an engineer on the Google Toolbar. I’m one of the people trying to track down and fix compatibility issues between the Toolbar and IE7.
The issue you described in this post is one we haven’t been able to reproduce. Would you be willing to get in touch with me via e-mail and help me track it down so we can fix it?
Thanks.
Comment by Albert Bodenhamer | February 28, 2006
I realize that you posted this months ago, I was just curious if you have fixed the problem.
Let me set up the problem. I downloaded ie7 beta 2 and had no problems with it, concerning google toolbar.
Later I created a dual boot with xp and vista (first public release).
Installed the google toolbar on vista os (came with the same beta version of ie7) and all of the sudden my rt click menu would open but it wouldn’t highlight or let me select any of the options.
Moving forward, I am now using a new box that started with xp and downloaded rc1 and I had no problems with google toolbar and rt click menus.
Yesterday I updated this xp version to vista rc1 (comes with ie7 rc1) and all of the sudden I have the same problem with rt click menu. I uninstalled the google toolbar and the problem went away. I reinstalled it and the problem came back.
Thanks for your patience with the long post, but I love my google toolbar and want it back.
Comment by Mike | September 9, 2006
I talked to the Google engineer who posted above you, and they handled the problem pretty well. If there is a problem with Vista, you can be guaranteed it will be fixed by the time Vista hits stores. They’re pretty on the ball with this stuff, thankfully.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | September 10, 2006
Not relavant to IE7 but very much related to your IE7 right click issues. The new “silent” update of the google toolbar brought back a very, very old issue dating back to the Win95 days. error 8007ffff. More specifically, “Could not complete the operation due to error 8007ffff”. I did not uninstall the toolbar. I disabled the toolbar dll; listed twice in add-ons manager. Restarted PC…no issues since. None. Contact me via email if you feel there is any relevance here regarding your issue study.
Comment by Bill North | September 20, 2006
I was just updated to Google Toolbar 4.0.1019.5266-big/en (GGLG). I am running vista and using IE 7 (7.0.5384.4). Not long after the upgrade I noticed the same r-click issue mentioned above. I disable the toolbar and the issue goes away, I enable it and it comes back. Any Ideas?
Comment by Rob Toyias | September 26, 2006
I am using Win XP SP2, IE 6, and the Google toolbar has caused me the same problem (right click does not function). It has also APPARENTLY caused IE to crash, show an error, and no other attempts to open a browser window work until the machine is rebooted. Not too surprisingly, though I use Google (literally!) hundreds of times a day, once I uninstalled it all the problems went away. This is as of Saturday, 9-23-06.
Comment by Michael | September 27, 2006
I have experienced the same problems as Michael. Using Win2K SP4, IE6 and MSIE6 since the toolbar took it upon itself to upgrade to version 4 I had crashes in IE6, MSIE6, unable to rightclick to bring up context menus, all programs not responding at times without rebooting. Completely uninstalled Google Toolbar and all problems went away. Still waiting for a solution from Google.
Comment by Ray Campbell | October 1, 2006
Ray do you have to uninstall all Google stuff or just the Google toolbar. I really like the toolbar but, I’m having the exact problem you are while using IE6 sp2. Damn! For such a great product you think they would have fixed this already. I don’t think we are the only ones with this problem.
Comment by Chris | October 5, 2006
I believe I have had the same issue. It just started recently, but each time I opened IE7, my computer would crash. I finally went on HP’s website and they recommended changing some options, one which included disabling 3rd party browser extensions. So I did. Which also removed google toolbar. So today, I reinstalled. Same issue happened, I read the small print and it said that google toolbar has to enable 3rd party browser extensions to work. So i uninstalled, problem went away! Anyone know any other good toolbars>?
Comment by Sarah | October 17, 2006
I am using IE6 SP 2, and I have the same problems described by Ray above:-
1. Slow deteriation of performance and finally crashing of IE6.
2. Occasional loss of right-click menus.
3. System error messages on trying to save-as something from the browser window.
4. Occasional crashes of other programs, or just non-responding.
So far, I have just disabled the toolbar from the IE6 toolbar (i.e. no tick against the Google toolbar. I have not made any modification to any of the Google standard settings. This started occurring when I had the toolbar update a week ago.
Hope that helps someone…
Comment by Cass | October 18, 2006
Hi again,
So, I did a quick test… I totally uninstalled the Google Toolbar, rebooted, checked IE6 was working okay, rebooted agaion, and then installed from scratched the downloadable version of the toolbat (ver 4.0.1020.2544).
Since doing this, I have so far not seen the problems experienced beforehand. Just a solution that worked for me…
Cheers,
Cass.
Comment by Cass | October 18, 2006
I use ie7 and upgraded to the compatible google toolbar and I can only find one major issue with it.
Google toolbar even the enterprise ie 7 compatable one disable ie7’s new right click menu and replaces it with a google ie6 type one
Therefore removing the open in new tab option for links etc.
An if you install the older version it works until googles auto update (non disableable) feature updates to the newest one.
if you uninstall the google toolbar you will find their auto update restores it.
to remove it until they (google) fix it, disable both google addins for ie7, then uninstall the toolbar.
I have done this and temporaraly set google as my home page or 1 of.
Comment by John Hughes | November 11, 2006
Anybody try to install Google Toolbar for Firefox 2.0 on Vista?
Well, I can’t use FF anymore and there is no way to tell the Toolbar to go away?
What to do?
Comment by Lonny Paul | November 19, 2006
@ Lonny Paul
I can’t uninstall it either, the best I could do was disable it in the add-ons menu
Comment by Busy | March 27, 2007
The Supreme Court told Microsoft loooong ago that they can NEVER fully intigrate their browser into their OS.
Comment by Ryan Seacrest | April 27, 2007
I contacted Google about this a long time ago since I STILL have the same r-click problems. They told me that it isn’t their problem but that it was an issue with IE. Sorry - as much as I love G and as much as I hate to NOT put blame on MS, it IS a Google problem. I hope to God they fix this!!!
Comment by Scott | May 7, 2007
I have a Right-Click problem with IE7. I am not using any toolbar (Google, Yahoo etc.) When several IE7 windows are opened the Right click wont work not only in IE but also in Windows (Desktop, Task bar etc). The right click problem will go away when I close one or two IE windows. Then I installed FireFox and using it for a while. No problems.
Donno whether MS fixed the Right-Click problem with IE7. I am up to date with MS Update…
Comment by Tester | November 25, 2007
Tester, look here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=269
The fix requires a little bit of poking in the registry, but then you should be fine.
Comment by Tim | November 25, 2007