Update 28-March: As I said in the original intro to this post, I was reluctant to publish this tweak, because I have absolutely no explanation for why it should work. If someone else had posted this, I would have assumed it was snake oil and would have been extremely skeptical. As skeptical as Rafael Rivera, even.
Actxprxy.dll is one of the core libraries for Internet Explorer (along with a few others such as Urlmon.dll and Mshtml.dll). If it’s not properly registered, IE won’t work at all. And re-registering it should never be necessary except in extreme circumstances.
Having said all that, I can only point to the experience I reported in the post linked below, which has since been confirmed by others in comments and e-mails. Are they all experiencing placebo effects? That’s possible, I guess. It’s also possible that some third-party software or add-on is somehow screwing up this DLL and its associated registry settings. I have contacted some engineers at Microsoft to see if they can shed light on the issue and will follow-up after I hear from them.
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Over at ZDNet I just published the results of some performance testing I did involving the current crop of browsers. During the course of my research, I stumbled across a tweak that I was at first hesitant to publish. After thinking carefully about it, I decided to do so. I’m glad I did. I have now heard from easily a dozen people via e-mail and in comments who say the improvement in performance for them is amazing.
Please read the original post (Is IE8 really fat and slow?) to get the full background. If you’re experiencing problems with IE8 being slow to load pages, especially when multiple tabs are involved, this might be worth a try. Because this tweak is simply registering a DLL that should have been registered as part of the IE8 installation, there is no harm that can come from trying this.
Here are the instructions.
FOR WINDOWS XP
1. Click Start, then click Run.
2. In the Run dialog box, type cmd and press Enter.
3. In the Command Prompt window, enter this text and press Enter:
regsvr32 actxprxy.dll
4. Restart your computer.
FOR WINDOWS VISTA/WINDOWS 7
1. Type cmd in the Start menu Search box.
2. Right-click the Cmd shortcut that appears at the top of the search results list, Under Programs, as shown here.
3. Choose Run As Administrator.
4. In the Command Prompt window, enter this text and press Enter:
regsvr32 actxprxy.dll
5. Restart your computer.
If this works for you, let me know in the comments below…
Thanks Ed!!! What a significant improvement this made to IE8 on my PC (IE8 on Windows 7 PC). I really thought IE8 was fat and slow until I tried this. Can not believe that Microsoft has not done something to let the masses know about this. I am going to use IE8 this weekeknd to see how it performs. Will try watching some March Madness games using IE8. Again, thanks for a great tip and if you have any other tips, please share them!!!
Does this also work on Vista 64bit? I ask because of the “32″ at the end of “regsvr”.
You should do a Mark Russinovich-style post, to explain how you discovered this problem. The cause would be interesting indeed. I suspect either a race condition, or an antivirus/antispyware program.
Setup tends to be one of the biggest hurdles in using a program. Windows 7 will be the best way to get IE8.
Well done ! Yes, it worked very nicely. Actually made a world of difference in page loading time, meaning it reduced it “big time”. I presume this cmd has to be run only once unless IE8 has to be reinstalled?
Is this tweak applicable to IE7 or only IE8 ?
Similar question to “Michael’s” with a twist, does it apply to the 64bit version of IE7 and/or IE8 ?
This tweak does indeed work on x64 Vista (and Windows 7). I’ve successfully run it here. It’s worth noting that in x64 Windows versions the default browser is actually the 32-bit version. Although there’s a 64-bit IE, it’s not used by default, primarily because add-ons like Flash and Silverligbht are unsupported.
Thanks Ed,
I tried this on both Vista and Windows 7 and it improved performance on both significantly.
You wrote: “I was at first hesitant to publish.”
Why? Is there a potential downside to entering this command? Could it cause other unintended problems with the system? Is this something only people who notice slowness should enter, or can everyone do it without worrying about side-effects?
Nancy, there’s no real downside to this. The DLL in question should be registered on any Windows system. If it’s registered correctly, re-registering it has no deleterious effect.
So why was I hesitant? I like to have a solid understanding of why a particular procedure works before I publish something, and I still have unanswered questions about this tweak. I know from experience that once something like this gets published, it becomes like an urban legend. But given the response I’ve had so far, I’m happy I did this.
When I hear more from Microsoft, I will update the post to add the why along with the how.
Ed,
I sent a personal email indicating that it’s made a difference for me too, but perhaps I spoke to soon, though I’m thinking this might be a different issue. When I click a link in Outlook, it goes to IE8, but usually says that ie has stopped working, and then it tries to refresh all of the tabs that are open, sometimes they too stop working, and eventually, sometimes after 2-3 times of clicking the close the program pop up dialog it will finally open up the liked web site. Sometimes it nevers open. It seems with an earlier release candidate that dropping the Live toolbar made a difference. Do you know what might be going on? I’ll try taking off the Live toolbar addin and see if it makes a difference. Thanks
I guess I should have checked before writing. I don’t have Live toolbar enabled. So that’s not the issue.
You can try resetting IE completely using this technique: Open IE, click Tools, Internet Options, Advanced tab. Click Reset button. You will need to reinstall any add-ons or customizations.
As a less drastic measure, you can also run IE in “clean mode.” Make sure all instances of Iexplore.exe are closed. Then click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and click Internet Explorer (No Add-ons).
March 27, 2009 – Thanks a lot Ed, I was thinking about going to IE7, but this fixed problems
It would be interesting if people could post whether or not the DLL was registered on their system before taking this step, but I haven’t found a simple way of determining that.
Wow that really made an improvement in speed!!
Vista 32bit
I have a different problem: If I have a tab open with OWA for Exchange 2003, tab operations are almost impossible. I can’t create or open new tabs without waiting for a very very long time (> 30 seconds, but haven’t timed). However, operations within the OWA tab are normal.
Bottom line, IE8 is slower than other browsers, and I am not talking about Javascript benchmarks. The application itself is slow.
Major improvement opening pages and multiple tabs on Vista SP1. See similar improvement on XP. Good catch.
I ran the tweak and can definitely tell a difference in the speed at which IE8 loads (I’m running on Vista 32 bit Premium Edition). Pages load noticably faster! I really like IE8 but was not pleased with the slow page loads. Your suggestion really made my day!
Seems to be a nice tweak.
And thanks for the bonus information about why IE7/8 32-bit is the default on my 64-bit Vista system (although I’ll still use the 64-bit IE8).
I’m tickled with this IE8 speed fix. The speed fixes I have tried in the past for various kinds of software didn’t work as advertised, if at all. This fix though, wow! IE8 is now faster by a factor of 3x for me. That is with only two open tabs, though, so not a scientific test.
Try to avoid the midday Arizona sun–it will burn your braincells–and keep up the good work, Ed.
Thanks.
Thanks Ed…seems to have made a significan difference on my 3 Vista machines as well as my one XP machine. It seems so much more response that before this tweak.