How to disable or redirect Internet Explorer error reporting

SUMMARY

This article describes how to disable or redirect Microsoft Internet Explorer Error Reporting crashes to an internal server with Internet Explorer 6.

The Internet Explorer Error Reporting tool is included with all versions of Internet Explorer 6 and is available from the Microsoft Windows Update Web site if you are running Internet Explorer 5.x. You cannot disable or redirect Internet Explorer Error Reporting crashes to an internal server with Internet Explorer 5, but you can uninstall it. For additional information about Internet Explorer Error Reporting,

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Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry,

It may be useful to disable Internet Explorer Error Reporting so that when Internet Explorer crashes, the default operating system error handler is called instead. It may also be useful to redirect the crashes so instead of establishing a connection to Microsoft, they connect to an internal server to report crashes. To redirect Internet Explorer Error Reporting to report crashes to an internal server, use the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Common\DWFileTreeRoot

The value is a String, and should be in the following form:

"\\server name\share name"

Each user needs write access to the share or it will not work. To set up the server so that it is capable of collecting the dumps,

To disable Internet Explorer Error Reporting so that the default operating system error handler is shown if a crash occurs, set the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

IEWatsonEnabled = (DWORD) 0
DWNeverUpload = (DWORD) 1
DWNoExternalURL = (DWORD) 1
DWNoFileCollection = (DWORD) 1
DWNoSecondLevelCollection = (DWORD) 1

A value of 0 disables Internet Explorer Error Reporting, and a value of 1 enables it (removing the key also enables Internet Explorer Error Reporting).

If you do change Internet Explorer Error Reporting to report to an internal server, you should refer to the Office XP Resource Kit and the documentation for the "Corporate Error Reporting Tool" to view and diagnose which crashes should be reported to Microsoft to find a possible fix.

Note Internet Explorer Error Reporting (IEER) does not work in Windows XP or later versions. Windows Error Reporting (WER) is used instead. If WER is disabled and Internet Explorer encounters a fault, no notification is displayed.