Internet Explorer prints only HTML

Submitted by Rick on August 29, 2007 - 7:44pm.

Today I ran into a problem that I hadn't seen before. A customer's MSN and Internet Explorer browser (including MSN email and web mail) would only print the HTML coding of a web page or email.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the programming that is used to present web pages to us and the coding behind text color, bold, etc. in email. We had cleaned some spyware from this users computer earlier in the day, and even printed out some pictures, but a few hours later I received a call about this strange symptom. At first, I thought it was just a forwarded email gone awry, but after arriving on the scene and seeing that word processing documents, test pages, pictures, and spreadsheets all printed fine, the culprit was definitely in Internet Explorer 7.

Deleting temp files, using the IE 7 reset settings button, and changing printers didn't work. After a few minutes of searching the web for an answer, I came across this jewel of a solution that worked!

Close any open programs
Click Start --> Run
Type: regsvr32 /i mshtml.dll
Press Enter on your keyboard
Click Start --> Run Type: regsvr32 /i shdocvw.dll
Press Enter on your keyboard

That did it! If your Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, MSN, or AOL browser prints only HTML coding, which usually starts with the following text, use the above six steps to restore sanity to your Internet and email printing.

DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"

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AOL Browser shows only html??????

Submitted by Smart Computer User on October 6, 2008 - 9:12pm.

Internet explorer and Firefox work great but the AOL Browser shows only html on the pages! It always tries to debug but never does. I have tried everything but nothing works. Any ideas?

Delete AOL

Submitted by Rick on October 6, 2008 - 9:38pm.

I'm serious...AOL software is early 1990's technology and has no business being used this far into the 21st century.

I cannot watch any videos.

Submitted by Smart Computer User on August 9, 2008 - 4:17pm.

I tried to see your video but like all other vides it is not accessible to me. Oh sure it eventually starts but then it stops and I get absolutely nothing. Probably due to dial up internet...

internet printing only in html

Submitted by Smart Computer User on April 7, 2008 - 10:06am.

Since downoading ie7 everything I printed from the internet...mail, web pages, etc was printed in HTML. I'm no computer guru so, since I had just downloaded explorer 7 and tech support was free, I called Microsoft. The tech support solved my problem in about 30 minutes. The solution was to reset internet options to the default settings.

Mshtml.dll was loaded, but the DllRegister Server entry point wa

Submitted by Smart Computer User on March 10, 2008 - 9:01pm.

Same issue with my cousins computer. IE7 only html printout in one users account. The other account works fine on same computer. I tried the fix solution and received same error. Baffled.

Other seen options include double checking to make sure IE7 is default browser and another one under this link:

http://support.microsft.com/?kbid=175322

Yikes

Submitted by Rick on March 6, 2008 - 8:22pm.

It sounds like you might have bigger issues at stake...like maybe spyware or some corrupt Windows files. You will need to have a technician look at that system for you.