Solving Internet Browsing Problems By Don Trauger – Kennett
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to click a reset button on your computer to make any problems disappear? You could click it and everything would work again. That’s not about to happen in the broad sense but there are reset buttons on Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google’s Chrome. These are the three most popular Internet browser programs. These three programs allow you to view web sites, check your email and search for information. Internet Explorer automatically comes with Windows and is identified as a blue letter “e” with a diagonal gold band. If you want to try Firefox, it can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ and Chrome can be downloaded from www.filehippo.com. You don’t need all three and computer users usually choose one or the other based on personal preferences. I will say this; Chrome is perceived to offer better protection and is recommended for on-line banking and other situations where security is to be considered.
The reset button comes into play whenever something goes wrong when you are using any one of the aforementioned programs. What can go wrong is not limited to any particular function within the program. It may be that a web page doesn’t display properly, email can’t be sent or possibly there is a printing problem. Internet Explorer seems more prone than the others to problems requiring a reset.
To reset Internet Explorer open Internet Explorer, click Tools (gear icon) in the upper right corner and click Internet Options in the drop down menu. In the pop-up window click the Advanced tab. Next click the Reset button. In the second pop-up window click the Reset button. It’s not usually necessary to delete personal settings. This operation reinitializes Internet Explorer. Follow any screen prompts to finish the reset operation using suggested defaults.
Google Chrome can be reset by opening Chrome, then click the 3 bar icon in the upper right of the window. Click Settings in the drop down menu. Scroll down and click “Show advanced settings”. Scroll to the bottom then click “Reset browser settings”. In the pop-up window click the Reset button. It will be necessary to restore your home page after resetting Chrome. To do this, open Chrome and type in your home page address. Click the 3 gray bars, click settings and under “On startup” choose “Open a specific page or set of pages” then click “Set pages”. Next click “Use current pages” and OK the window.
Firefox can be reset by opening Firefox, click Help, then click Troubleshooting Information and click Reset Firefox. To restore your home page open Firefox, type in your home page address, click Tools, click Options in the drop down Menu and click “Use Current Page” and OK the window.
In summary these resets are meant for correcting problems within these three browser programs. I recommend that you have one other Internet browser program installed so you can compare to see if the problem exists in the second one. You can have all three if you wish to evaluate the best one for your needs.
The PC Club meets on the second Tuesday of every month at 7 PM, upstairs in the Ardmore room of the Community Center.