How To Fix IE8 Links Not Working

By Thomas Krehbiel

Tom · Krehbiel Tech · Microsoft · Monday, May 18, 2009, 7:34 PM · 250 words · 15 comments

If you’re having trouble with Internet Explorer 8 not opening links in Vista, try running IE once as an Administrator.

I have my wife setup to run as a Standard User on her Vista SP1 laptop.  After installing IE8, first from a downloaded installer file and then later from Windows Update, she found that there were certain links that simply wouldn’t work.  That is, she’d click a link and nothing would happen, as if it were ignoring her.  There were no messages or indicators of any kind.

It turned out that the links in question opened up another browser window or popup of some kind.  If you held down CTRL while clicking the links, it would open a new tab but still never loaded the page.  I tried to disable the popup blocking and fully trusting the sites in question but neither of those things fixed it, nor any other option I could find.  Eventually I tried logging into the Administrator account to run IE8 from there, and everything suddenly worked as expected.

Now my wife reports that she is able to click links as before from her Standard User account.  Presumably some kind of one-time initialization needed to occur under a full Administrator account.

I logged in as an Administrator, but it may also work if you simply use the Run As Administrator menu.  Give it a try if you find that links don’t work for no apparent reason.

Reader Comments

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1. Sean/Red said,

Thats a good start :)

Monday, May 18, 2009, 10:00 PM

2. Earl B said,

Run-as administrator didn't fix it. But it *did* allow me to access your page, which it wouldn't before.

I'm waiting on an install before rebooting to log in as admin and see if that fixes it.

Thursday, Aug 13, 2009, 4:40 PM

3. Earl B said,

Interesting...it's worked *without* a log-in as administrator.

Perhaps there was a time delay?

The only other thing I can think of is a downloader plug-in that Administrator had, and wasn't available to the non-admin login.

Thursday, Aug 13, 2009, 4:49 PM

4. Bret said,

One source of the problem with links not completing or "hanging" in IE8 is AVG LinkScanner. Disable that and enable IE8 SmartScreen filter instead.

Sunday, Nov 29, 2009, 9:10 AM

5. Tony said,

Tried that and still no luck. Brand new board, Win 7 with IE8. Even tried going to MS for support but came to the "this support inquiry will cost you" and it's only 20 days old? Still looking to solve this issue. Thanks so far.

Sunday, Jan 3, 2010, 2:21 PM

6. Pete said,

I have exactly the same problem. New laptop with Win 7 and IE8 and certain links dont work!!!

Friday, Jan 22, 2010, 10:12 AM

7. Jane said,

ditto to Pete...grrr

Monday, Jan 25, 2010, 5:43 AM

8. Paul said,

Seems like a lot of people are having this problem. When are we going to get a fix?

Sunday, Jan 31, 2010, 7:00 PM

9. Jon said,

Same problem here. Moving to Firefox.

Wednesday, Mar 3, 2010, 7:20 AM

10. Ajay said,

I have exactly the same problem. IE8 on Win 7 32-bit, certain links which otherwise work fine of firefox dont work on IE8.

Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010, 12:04 AM

11. Dave said,

I have the same problem. I tried the "admin" work around and the AVG disable but no work !!! Did anyone find any other possible solution please????

Thanks

=Dave=

Wednesday, Apr 7, 2010, 12:44 AM

12. Mike said,

Same problem with Win7, IE8. I have tried every fix I could find on the web, including manually registering all the IE dlls, with no luck. I even uninstalled all AV and it didn't help. I installed MS Security Essentials, but I still can't open a link in another domain from the page where the link is located.

Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010, 11:00 AM

13. Rob said,

I have the same issue all of a sudden with IE 8 and Win 7 32bit runnning in a networked environment. I worked with Microsoft support for a whole day registering dll's, uninstalling and re-installing IE 8 and .net framework downloads. Re-setting IE8 to initial install config, running IE8 without add-ons, updating java, etc. Nothing worked and they are stumped. I did notice however if I logged in as another user on the same computer the links worked in IE8. That would suggest a profile corruption however I created a new fresh profile for me on the same machine and logged in again and the same problem of links not working occured. Just a week earlier things worked great so we also tried a system restore to that time frame when the links worked but the issue is still unresolved. The ticket is escalated to MS tier 2 support so if they come up with a fix I'll let everyone know. I am pretty sure re-imaging a computer with this problem will fix it but that is an extreme measure and time consuming to reload everything again so that is a last resort.

Tuesday, Apr 20, 2010, 10:22 PM

14. Rob said,

I have the fix! Microsoft was unable to provide me with a fix before I found one myself. The issue is caused by DCOM settings that are incorrect. Follow the steps below and links will work again in IE8. win 7 and vista. Good luck

Open “DCOMCNFG” to open up the Component services

Expand ‘component services’ and ‘computers’ and right hand click on ‘properties’

This would open the properties for My Computer and click on “Default Properties”

Ensure that

Default Authentication Level is

“Connect”

Default Impersonation Level is

“Identify”

Friday, Apr 23, 2010, 5:03 PM

15. Wendy said,

Well. That didn't work either.

Saturday, Jun 12, 2010, 9:15 PM

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