I'm working on a new/fresh Windows 7 32bit machine that now has IE9 installed. The user is using the Dell Stardock application as his primary "desktop" (all his links there). When we place an internet link there and click on it we get the following error message:
There was a problem sending the command to the program.
To me this indicates that IE9 is having trouble going to the website we want to go to, which should get passed as a parameter to the browser when it opens.
I don't think this is a StarDock/ObjectDock problem because we also have some other problems with internet links. For example, we cannot move an internet link from the Desktop to the Quick Launch on the task bar. When we do try, it forces us to put the link with the IE icon as part of the IE menu instead of allowing us to have a shortcut there as it's own entry. I should mention however, that links on the desktop and in the taskbar do work as we expect them too (without showing the above error message).
It appears that this problem started after installing Windows Updates. Since we installed a whole bunch of updates at once I have no idea which one caused the problem.
I did have Google Chrome installed but I uninstalled it since the user wants to use IE. The problem started before I uninstalled Chrome. I also reset the browser settings on IE9. It didn't help.
Next I uninstalled IE9 which took me back to IE8. This actually did resolve the problem but the problem came back as soon as I installed IE9 again.
We have Verizon Internet Security installed. It's actually a McAfee product rebranded to look like Verizon. I'm not real crazy over this software but the customer has a subscription so we're not planning to change it. I have no reason to believe that this is causing the problem and yet I know that security software is often to blame for strange issues.
I've looked at the registry settings for the following keys and everything appears to be ok for every single one of them:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.html
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\command
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\ddeexec\Application
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open\command
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.Website\Shell\Open\Command
Edit1:
I've found two potential solutions but I won't be able to try them until tomorrow. One is to disable the "Windows Font Cache" service. Another is to clear IE cache and browsing history. I won't be able to try out either solution until tomorrow since this is a remote client's machine. I see there are lots of other suggestions online but if you take the time to read them through you'll see that the other suggestions didn't fix the problem.