Internet Explorer 7 has broken my Bluetooth in Windows XP

15 April 2007

I have a bluetooth USB key which I was able to use under Windows XP before. Since Windows Update has upgraded my browser to Internet Explorer 7, the security features now mean that I cannot browse throught he bluetooth tree.

I get the pop-up message about how Internet Explorer has prevented something from running (perhaps an ActiveX applet or something) but because I'm in Windows Explorer and not Internet Explorer I can't access the information bar to see if there is someway to allow it to run.

An annoying thing is that I don't actually use Internet Explorer as my browser on this machine. I only have one machine that I run Internet Explorer on as a browser on a regular basis and that runs Internet Explorer 6; it is my work machine which I can't change browser on as it has some very badly designed software which is not compatible with Internet Explorer 7, Firefox or any other browsers.
My browser of choice is of course Firefox which I've been happy with for a few years now. Yet another example of how having an operating system completely dependant upon a browser is not the smartest of ideas. I've not even dared to try the dongle in Windows Vista, I'm going to wait until I can get some hardware that is designed to work with that, as I've not had the best of experience even with software that is supposed to work with Vista, let alone software that is not. At least the bluetooth tongle still works in Linux :-)