Error: Please wait while Explorer View is loaded. If Explorer View does not appear, your browser may not support it.

Internet Explorer 8, and Windows XP combination breaks Explorer View in SharePoint. If you are running IE8 and an OS such as Windows XP and then open a Document Library in Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS 2007) and then choose the Explorer view you get the message:

Please wait while Explorer View is loaded. If Explorer View does not appear, your browser may not support it.

Some things you can try:

1. Make sure that when you are on the SharePoint site that it shows you are on a Trusted Site or an Intranet Site. In particular, not an Internet site.

2. Go to your Start Menu | Run... and then type services.msc. Scroll to Web Client and make sure it is set to Automatically start, and that it is started.

3. Instead of going to Explorer view, when you are on the All Documents view, click on the Action menu and choose Open with Windows Explorer. This should open a Windows Explorer view. From here, it will act like a regular Windows Explorer window which is what the Explorer view tries to do, but in the browser.

4. Make sure you have at least Office 2003 installed on your computer. You can also install FrontPage. This will make sure the web components are installed.

5. Install this security patch for IE. The actual link for downloading is: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=8799159d-df69-49f6-9db5-49147690ce0c&displaylang=en It is explained here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974455/  Follow instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972584/ to enable the patch.

6. Go to Start Menu | Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs. Is there an item for Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components? There should be if you are running Office 2003. There should be a similar one for Office 2007

7. Run IE8 in compatibility mode. To do this, open IE8 and go to the Tools menu | Developer tools (F12) | Browser Mode | and then select Internet Explorer 7. This site shows how to do this.

If none of this helps, I recommend down-grading to IE 7 and see if that fixes your issue.

If you still have no luck. Un-install Office 2003 and IE8. Then Re-install Office 2003 or greater. Test to see if it works with IE 6 or IE 7 depending on what what you install. Then if everything works, install IE8. If it stops working, pray for a MS fix.

This thread talks about some of the scenarios and OS’s that are affected. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointgeneral/thread/99d923cd-50e2-4a32-a45d-5df4f8627f37