Windows 7: Defensive Computing -IE can adversely effect F'fox.

How Internet Explorer can adversely affect Firefox

Although I live in Windows, I avoid Internet Explorer - its the Defensive Computing thing to do. My approach is the same as Steve Gibson's, we run IE once a month to install Microsoft patches, then ignore it until next month.

Not too long ago, on his Security Now! podcast, Gibson suggested further protection from IE by setting both the Internet and Intranet zones to "High" security levels. What the heck, I figured, an extra bit of safety can't hurt. But it did hurt, and thus, this blog posting.

The advice isn't new, of course, but I implemented it sometime early this year. Unfortunately, I also upgraded my main XP machine to service pack 3 around the same time. Thus, when Firefox acted up, I first suspected the service pack. False lead.

The problem was that Firefox couldn't download files. Rather than spend time researching it, I just ran Chrome the few times I needed to download a file from a website. Since the solution was so simple, the problem didn't rate much time or effort. My email program, Thunderbird, had no problem saving attached files, so I made due.