Just wanted to share a very annoying experience I had with my QTP installation, with the hope that it may help others that encounter the same problems.

One day, QTP stopped recording Internet Explorer on my Mac. And when I say “stopped”, I mean it stopped “Windows style” – i.e. it crashed my Internet Explorer, and on some occasions my QTP. This happened, when recording, adding objects to the repository, and replaying pre-made scripts.

Well, I’ve just installed SP3, so I immediately uninstalled it, and found that now the problem crashed my Internet Explorer, on some occasions my QTP, and sometimes, even my windows (needless to say that my Mac kept on running without breaking a sweat).

The next suspect was Internet Explorer 7, which is known to be tricky and have mood-swings. So, I’ve uninstalled IE7 (took me two restarts and one crash, naturally). But IE6 turned out to be just as stubborn, and has failed just as gloriously. After a few installs and uninstalls of every one of the above components, I’ve finally given up, and have decided to reinstall windows.

This actually worked – my QTP could once again work with Internet Explorer, and all could rejoice. After a careful one-by-one installation of all my programs and utilities, I’ve finally found the one responsible for the whole mess. It was my Kaspersky internet security suit.

Now, I know what you’re going to say – If my IE was crashing, how come I didn’t immediately suspected my Internet Firewall? Well, I did. But it turns out that shutting the little bugger down won’t work – you have to completely uninstall it, and all the user-data that goes along with it. My guess is that it injects some code into IE, and it doesn’t play well with out children, especially not a big bully such as QTP.

So if you start experiencing problems when working with QTP on IE, don’t just try shutting you firewall down – uninstall it completely. It might just save you the work of reinstalling your entire operating system.