Internet Explorer: Cannot type in a field

Something very weird happened the other day. I use both Firefox 3.x and Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). I prefer Firefox, but some things are designed for IE (like Microsoft Partner pages, and a link to a client’s system), so there are occasions when I have to use IE.

When I opened IE7 that day, I got some message about an add-on not being compatible. That was the first weird thing — I’ve never seen any messages about IE add-ons, ever.

Then when I went to enter a search term into Google, or enter anything into any field on any website, nothing happened. I couldn’t see the marker for the cursor position in any field and I couldn’t type in any field.

The mouse worked, command buttons worked, and I could enter an web address at the top, but I couldn’t type in any field on the screen. I closed and re-opened IE7, I looked under Tools > Manage Add-ons to see if there was anything there that showed some sort of error. Nothing.

Using Firefox, I did a Google search and found a solution here: http://www.winxptutor.com/ieabout.htm

I closed IE7, then ran the first command suggested on that page (REGSVR32 MSHTMLED.DLL). I re-opened IE7 to see if it worked, and it did! I had my typing function back!

I still don’t know what caused it, but at least I was able to fix it.

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