Category: Microsoft

Element not found problem in IE8 for adding search provider

Recently I faced a very annoying problem with IE installation. It is related to IE version upgrade. First it was upgraded from IE6 to IE7 and then IE8 was installed over IE7. After installing IE8, when you try to add Search provider by clicking Find More Providers… over Search menu drop-down in IE present at top-right corner, it gives Javascript error as follows:

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Timestamp: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:12:44 UTC

0.

Message: Element not found.

Line: 111
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx?dcsref=http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx

This problem comes because IE7 skips ThinkPad upgrade a registry entry somewhere during upgrade process and it has to be updated manually as follows:

  1. Click on Start menu and then Run
  2. Type regedit in run box and hit enter key. Registry Editor will be opened
  3. In Registry Editor, navigate to the following location: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{EAB22AC0-30C1-11CF-A7EB-0000C05BAE0B}\1.1\0\win32
  4. Open (default) key by double clicking and set data value as C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieframe.dll (possibly there will be other value present in data field like C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll)
  5. Close Registry Editor and restart IE.
  6. Now you should be able to add new Search Provider.