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Internet Explorer prints only HTML

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!

  1. Close any open programs
  2. Click Start –> Run
  3. Type: regsvr32 /i mshtml.dll
  4. Press Enter on your keyboard
  5. Click Start –> Run Type: regsvr32 /i shdocvw.dll
  6. 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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21 thoughts on “Internet Explorer prints only HTML”

  1. Joy

    THANKS Rick, so glad I found this post. One day everything was fine, and the next day everything from the web was printing in HTML. I tried your 6-step fix, and was told “Windows cannot find ‘regsvr32. . .
    I had also previously tried resetting internet options, but that didn’t work. So I saw your recomedation for firefox instead of internet explorer – I downloaded it and now I can print again! Thanks.

    3. randibou

      This resolution has screwed up my system now. I can no longer do a System Restore, use IE, Help, etc. w/o getting serious errors. This is not because of spyware or anything else, it’s because I’m running a version of mshtml.dll which doesn’t jive, I’m sure. I can not unregister/reregister a different mshtml.dll (it won’t allow it) and I now need help with that. Unbenounced to me, prior to applying your “fix” my nephew had updated the system to SP3. I believe the combination of this and your fix has created quite a mess. I may try to go ahead and reapply SP3 since the dll I used was probably one from SP2. Suggestions?

      1. Rick

        I’ll bet you might also be running IE8…this tip was for IE7. Look for IE8 in the Add/Remove programs and try again.

        2. randibou

          nope, running IE7 v20061107.210142, however, maybe I should go ahead and install IE8….that may fix the problem. I didn’t realize how many OS functions used this .dll, but there are several, including Help, System Restore, Remote Assistance, etc. etc. and I can’t use them now. What I don’t get is why I can’t register the .dll again (using another version). I’ve even tried this in safe mode. Well, I’ll take other suggestions if you got ’em, otherwise, I may need to uninstall SP3 (which is not a simple uninstall), and/or reapply SP3, or backup system and rebuild – obviously last resort.

          1. Rick

            You might have to do the uninstall on SP3, but you might be right on trying the IE8 upgrade first. Have you also tried the reset Internet Explorer option in the Advanced tab of IE options?

          2. randibou

            Okay, I attempted a repair of IE7. Everything looked like it was going to be fixed, but then a web page kept displaying asking me if I still wanted Google search engine to be the default. I said yes and the fix was shown to have Failed.

            Then, I reinstalled IE7. Again the web page displayed asking about the search engine. I answered the same way, got the same results. I changed my answer to no and now the fix displayed as Successful.

            So apparently, IE doesn’t want Google to be the default search engine either…… Someone else must have installed Google Desktop/Search engine as default somewhere along the way on this machine and apparently this was also a factor. Go figure.

            Anyway, System Restore now works, hmtl now prints from IE, problem appears to be resolved.

      3. dave

        Simple fix here. It sappears that your default html viewer has been changed to word. For windows 7, go tools, internet options/programs/set program/associate and default programs. Ensure HTML is IE, and the default browser is IE.
        That should do it!

      5. Ralph

        I have IE 8, and XP-SP3. I have the same problem as described above. IE used to print web pages just fine, but won’t any more. I’ll get a “Page 1 of 1” at the top and at the bottom I’ll get “file://C:DOCUME~1ESSLOCALS~1TempUUKA31QE.htm”. The middle is blank. I’ve reset IE to default with no success. I did not try the 6 steps above since this is XP and IE 8. Any suggestions?

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