IE7 printing HTML code on Vista

Daifne

Daifne

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I'm stumped. I have a customer's Gateway (yuck) with Vista SP1 in that was quite infected. Fixed all that and everything is fine, except this problem that did exist before the infections.

When you go to print or print preview in IE7 (or IE8 -- tried the upgrade to fix this), the output is the html code rather than the page properly rendered. Firefox works fine.

I have tried reregistering various .dll's, setting IE as the default, cleaning up all the remnants of AOL, removing various Google software, CCleaner, regedit... and so on. There are reports of this through Google search, but none of the suggested solutions have helped. I would hate to nuke and pave just to fix an IE problem.

Any ideas? Anyone else seen this?
 
You may need to edit the action associated with printing URLs. Open My Computer, go to Tools >> Folder Options.. and click the File Types tab and scroll down to URL. Click the Advanced button, the action for Print should be

rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\mshtml.dll,PrintHTML "%1"
 
Thanks Abe, Been there, tried that.

rusty.nells,
That's part of what Abe mentioned. Unfortunately, I can't find anything on Vista that will let me change the action. It's certainly not in Folder Options and I also couldn't find it in Default Programs>Set Associations

BTW, this is Vista Home Premium.
 
Third option not tried yet. I'll give that I try as soon as I get back from the next customer. Thanks, Honda.
 
http://www.watchingthenet.com/associate-delete-file-types-in-windows-vista.html Another site with another program or......

I also got creative and found that you could use regedit to find and then find .tmp and just delete it all.

Look here follow this path delete/view/edit the information associated with it.
___________________________________________________________
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.tmp
_________________________________________________________________

You may want to do some extra looking for more .tmp associations but I think this is the only one that matters. Find ".tmp" and hit F3. I was able to find two on my W7.

It will list notepad.exe as an opener. I would delete the whole Registry Key. .TMP shouldn't associate with anything.

Export the Registry key before deleting just in case
 
Grumble.

That Creativelement Power Tools is really nice, but everything is set properly.

.tmp is not associated with anything either when viewed with that tool or in the registry.

This is really a nasty one.

As a give up solution, I could either just tell them to use Firefox (which I prefer they do anyway) or that I'll have to do a reinstall.
 
Bummer,

Its one of those mystery's get solved a year later when your poking around the PC one day and you see a check box....

Enable print as HTML Source. LOL

:)
 
Yup, I know. I did do a lot of poking around in IE, even into the developer tools. I found nothing. I really don't like not being able to solve something, but I'm getting to the end here. I got this computer on Friday afternoon and had it cleaned by Sat. night. I've been trying to figure this one out since. I'm glad I tell the customers 3-5 days (just in case). ;-)
 
Yup to both. AOL had been installed an uninstalled at some point. I did clean a lot of it's garbage out of the registry and I do suspect that it was the root cause of this, but neither Reset nor setting as the default did anything.
 
Thanks LunchBox.

I had seen someone else who could print properly with protected mode off so tried it. No such luck. I will check the folder anyway in a little while.
 
YeeHaaa! I did it! Actually, I posted over in the MS Partner's Community forum and one of the moderators answered. Basically, he went through setting IE as the default again and checking a registry entry. Did so and the entry was fine. Rebooted and this time it took. Why it didn't before, I have no clue. I thanked him for whatever magic he just performed. ;-)
 
Daifne said:
YeeHaaa! I did it! Actually, I posted over in the MS Partner's Community forum and one of the moderators answered. Basically, he went through setting IE as the default again and checking a registry entry. Did so and the entry was fine. Rebooted and this time it took. Why it didn't before, I have no clue. I thanked him for whatever magic he just performed. ;-)
Click to expand...

Was this caused by removing AOL? Just curious.
 
I suspect AOL, but I have no absolute proof. Would not surprise me at all.
 
Daifne said:
YeeHaaa! I did it! Actually, I posted over in the MS Partner's Community forum and one of the moderators answered. Basically, he went through setting IE as the default again and checking a registry entry. Did so and the entry was fine. Rebooted and this time it took. Why it didn't before, I have no clue. I thanked him for whatever magic he just performed. ;-)
Click to expand...

Do you mind sharing step by step how it got resolved. It would help us all that posted here to help you. :D
 
Step by step? I don't even remember all that I did over the past four days. But here's the reply from the Partners forum that finally did it. In step 1, I assumed he meant to tell me to go into Internet Options. Regedit has no such tab. ;-)

From the problem description of the post you submitted, my understanding is: IE7 prints HTML codes rather than the actual page contents.

If I have misunderstood your concern, feel free to let me know.

Based on my research, the problem may occur if IE7 is not the default web browser. I understand that you have tried setting IE7 as the default. At this point, please follow the steps below to verify it:

Step 1: Set IE7 as default in IE options
========
1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box and press Enter.
2. Switch to Programs tab, click "Make default" under "Default web browser" if IE is not currently the default web browser.
3. Click OK.

Step 2: Set IE as default in Set Program Access and Computer Defaults
========
1. Click Start and click Default Programs.
2. Click "Set program access and computer defaults".
3. Select Custom and click to expand the options.
4. Select "Internet Explorer" as the default web browser and click OK.

Step 3: Verify the related registry key
========
1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box and press Enter.
2. Navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\InternetShortcut\Shell\print\command

3. In the right pane, make sure the (Default) value data is set as below:

"C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe" "C:\Windows\System32\mshtml.dll",PrintHTML "%1"

4. Quit Registry Editor.

Then, restart the computer to check the result.

Please let me know the results at your earliest convenience. If anything is unclear in my post, please don't hesitate to let me know and I will be glad to help. Thank you for your efforts and time.
Best regards,

Kevin Zhao
Partner Online Technical Community
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Click to expand...
 
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