5 Ways to Speed Up Browsing in Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer has been the one that stands atop all its competitors. With every new version of Internet Explorer, its speed, security, and accessibility increases. The latest version of IE, i.e; Internet Explorer 8, comes with new user friendly interfaces and improved browsing and rendering speed. However, it may so happen that your internet connection may not be delivering performance according to your expectations and your work is being hindered upon. Well, this can be resolved by boosting up your Internet Explorer 8 speed to a never before experienced level by 5 simple, user controlled methods.
[Tip : Enhance browsing speed of Mozilla Firefox.]
We, here at Tech-Tips-Geek, take a look at these 5 methods to speed up your IE8 browser to increase your browsing accessibility. You are free to use any or all of the above mentioned methods to boost up your internet speed.

1. Using Open DNS Settings :

Open DNS is a server setting of your internet connection that controls your browsing speed. It is essentially a feature incorporated to increase the web speed. However, this setting can be used to an extent which would bring before you an unforeseen level of web browsing speed. Here’s how :
For Windows XP users, click “Start” and select to enter the “Control Panel”. Double click on “Network and Internet Connections” to open it. Choose “Network Connections” to view your present network status. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, just select to view “Network Status and Tasks”.

Once your network status is displayed, right click on “Local Area Connection” and select “Properties”. You may also open the Local Area Connection Properties by simply double clicking on the Local Area Connection icon in your taskbar and then selecting “Properties”.

The Local Area Connection Properties box opens up. Under the “General” tab is a list “This connection uses the following items”. Select “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” if you are using Windows XP. For Vista and Windows 7 users, select “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)”. Then click “Properties”.

The Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties box appears. Your Internet Protocol (IP) address and other details of your connection are entered in teir respective columns. Now to use Open DNS, click to select “Use the following DNS server addresses”. Type in the following values in the DNS settings as shown below :
Preferred DNS Server :   208.67.222.222
Alternate DNS Server :   208.67.220.220

Click “OK” to save your newly entered setting values. Exit the Local Area Connection Wizard by clicking OK each time you close a box. Your task is saved and the Open DNS settings will now take effect. Your Internet Explorer 8 now demonstrates a increased speed like never before.

2. Importing a Simple Registry Tweak :

As mentioned earlier, Internet Explorer 8 comes with a whole new lot of features and interfaces to aid the user, here’s another one. Whenever, a web-page is opened in IE8, six different simultaneous connections are created, each with a job to download and render a specified part of the requested web-page. This feature truly goes well with web-pages that are small, simple and use little Flash based sections. However, opening web-pages of large sizes and using much Flash may take a bit of time.
Here, we introduce a simple registry tweak that on merging with the registry will increase the speed limit of your connection so as to boost up the rendering speed of IE8. Here’s how it is done :
Download the registry file “ieregedit.reg“.

Save it to any location in your computer. Make sure to save this file as “All Files” instead of the default “Text Document”.

Double click on the downloaded file to run it. Confirm when asked for to continue the process.

Click “Yes” when you are warned that your task may affect the registry settings.

On completion of the process a notification message appears that the registry file has been successfully integrated into the registry.
Incorporating a registry tweak truly increases the speed limit of your connection to provide you faster browsing experience.
[Tip : Re-enable Registry Editor when disabled by virus.]

3. Disabling SmartScreen Filter :

Internet Explorer 8 features a “SmartScreen Filter” which constantly analyzes the different sites when browsed by the user. The SmartScreen Filter essentially warns the user of potentially dangerous websites. Though Microsoft has reduced the intrusion level of this filter, it still slows down IE8 to quite an extent. We can always turn off this filter once we are aware of websites that seriously pose a threat to the user, in order to speed up IE8.
To turn off this SmartScreen filter :
Open Internet Explorer 8. Click on the “Safety” tab and navigate to SmartScreen Filter > Turn off SmartScreen Filter…
Click OK to confirm turning off SmartScreen Filter when you are asked for.

Turning off SmartScreen Filter provides the user with a choice to send addresses of websites to Microsoft in order to check them. The filter, when turned on provides no such choice to the user and thus the speed is reduced.

4. Disabling Feed Reading Features :

Keeping track of RSS feeds have become an important application integrated in most browsers nowadays. Reading RSS feeds eases and improves the accessibility of the user. However, this process slows down the speed of Internet Explorer 8. It’s always better to use a program (such as FeedDemon) that is completely concentrated on reading feeds. Feed reading feature of IE8, if turned on cuts most of the speed provided to the user.
To turn off this feed reading feature, follow the steps below :
Open Internet Explorer 8. Click on “Tools” menu and select “Internet Options”.

Now, choose the “Content” tab and click on “Settings” under the “Feed and Web Slices” menu.

The Feed and Web Slice Settings box appears. Unmark the box next to “Automatically check feeds and Web Slices for updates”. Under the Advanced menu, unmark the boxes next to “Turn on feed reading view” and “Turn on in page Web Slice discovery”. Click OK.
The RSS feed reading feature of Internet Explorer 8 is now disabled. Your browsing speed now boosts up to an unforeseen level.
[Tip : See how to download torrents remotely with Reactor Feed.]

5. Removing Useless Temporary Internet Files :

As the user browses through the web, some temporary internet files, cookies and cache files are stored in the system. These files come to no use other than occupying space in your hard drive and the speed of Internet Explorer 8 decreases noticeably. Cleaning your hard drive of these files will hence aid to increasing the browsing speed. CCleaner is a lightweight effective software dedicated to this job. Along with deleting these files, it also cleans the system of useless Windows Explorer and System files that slows down your system processes as a whole.
Removing such temporary files require you to download CCleaner. Save the downloaded setup file to any location in your computer.

Double click on the file and follow the instructions like in any other program installation to install CCleaner. Once installed, double click on the CCleaner icon to launch the program. Make sure that no browsers are open while CCleaner runs. Click on “Analyze“.
The analysis result shows the files to be deleted and their total size.Now, click on “Run Cleaner”.

You will be asked to confirm the permanent deletionof these files. Click OK.

The files shown in the analysis results get deleted and your system gets freed of the useless files. Internet Explorer, now demonstrates a high speed browsing and rendering capability.

Exit CCleaner.
Using any or all of these methods speeds up Internet Explorer 8 providing the user with a new improved browsing experience.