error navigating to URL with watir-webdriver

Question

Using IE8 and Windows 7

I have the following ruby code:

new_browser = Watir::Browser.new :ie
my_url = "http://myworkingurl.mydomain.net/mypage.html"
new_browser.goto my_url

When the Internet Explorer window opens, I get the following modal popup:

A program on your computer has corrupted your default search provider
setting for Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer has reset this setting to your original search provider,
<redacted>.

Internet Explorer will now open Search Settings, where you can change this
setting or install more search providers.

Because of this unexpected modal popup, the following exception gets thrown:

Failed to navigate to http://myworkingurl.mydomain.net/mypage.html. This usually means that a call to the COM method IWebBrowser2::Navigate2() failed.

I can close the modal window and it will start working, but then a few minutes later the same issue will occur. How can I permanently fix this issue?

Answer 1

It looks like you need a hotfix from Microsoft . Try that.