Browser Central: How to make Internet Explorer faster

Internet Explorer is used by 55% of the world's 2 billion internet surfers. It is by far the most popular browser, with Firefox in distant second place with 21% of the market. For the most part, Internet Explorer is so widely used because of its inclusion in Windows XP, Vista, and 7, and many users aren't tech savvy enough to change to an alternative browser, like Firefox or Chrome. Internet Explorer also dominates the enterprise market, where Windows is installed on almost every computer, and administrators do not let employees change their browser.

If you use Internet Explorer (IE) on a daily basis, you may have noticed something: it's slow. The newest version (IE9) is very fast, but no less than 50% of the web's surfers (1 billion people!) use old and creaking versions of Internet Explorer. The best thing, then, if you want to speed up Internet Explorer is to upgrade to version 9.

If you can't upgrade, though — if you're required to use IE6, 7, or 8 — there are still a few things you can do to speed your browser up.

Disable unneeded add-ons and toolbars
The easiest and quickest way to speed up Internet Explorer is to remove the bits that you don't actually use. Click Tools then Manage Add-ons. Toolbars and Extensions should be selected on the left side, and on the right side you should see a fairly long list of things that load when you open up Internet Explorer. The bigger the list, the longer it will take IE take to load up and the slower your browsing experience will be. Make sure "Currently loaded add-ons" is selected on the left side of the window, too.

For the most part, you can disable anything in this list. The names are self-explanatory, like "Skype add-on for IE," and "Windows Live Toolbar." Don't disable "Shockwave Flash Object" — you need it to watch YouTube videos and play Facebook games — but it's safe to disable every toolbar.

Once you're done disabling add-ons and toolbars, click Accelerators on the left side of the window. You'll see a list of Accelerators — but unless you actually use them, go ahead and disable everything in the list.

Enable pop-up and ad blocking
Big, shiny, graphical pop-ups are annoying, but they also really slow down your surfing. Fortunately Internet Explorer has a pop-up blocker that you can turn on.

Click Tools then Internet Options. From the Privacy tab enable "Turn on Pop-up blocker." On older versions of Internet Explorer it might be called "Block pop-ups." Click OK to finish.

Another way to speed up browsing is to block ads — especially animated Flash ads. IE7Pro, a free download that works with IE6, 7, and 8, blocks ads rather well — and it also includes a spell checker, and some other neat features, too.

Clean up
The next step is to clean up Internet Explorer's old, temporary, and disused files. These files take up hard drive space and can slow IE down considerably.

Download CCleaner (it's free), then install and run it. CCleaner will also clear up other parts of your computer — so not only will Internet Explorer speed up, but your computer will feel altogether a bit snappier.

At this point, you should follow our guide on speeding Windows up. You can polish Internet Explorer until it shines, but it's all for naught if Windows itself is slow.

Preventative measures
You can always run through these steps every time IE starts to slow down — but wouldn't it be easier if you could stop it slowing down in the first place? With this change, IE should stay faster for longer.

Click Tools, then Internet Options. On the General tab, under History, set "Days to keep pages in history" to 1 and click OK. If you do not see the History section, click Settings under "Browsing history." Set the number of days to 1 at the bottom of the window that pops up.

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