Cannot find any elements using Internet Explorer 11 and Selenium (any version) and IEWebDriver (any version)

Question

I've searched all over for an answer and I can't find any fix to my issue. I am trying to run my Selenium tests in IE11. All other browsers work fine (including Edge). A simple test as follows will cause the issue...

System.setProperty("webdriver.ie.driver.loglevel","TRACE");
System.setProperty("webdriver.ie.driver.logfile", "C:/Projects/logme.txt");
driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(3, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.manage().deleteAllCookies();
driver.manage().window().maximize();
driver.get("http:www.google.com");
driver.findElement(By.id("lst-ib")).click;

IE11 will launch and navigate to a URL but it cannot find any elements anywhere on any page. Again, I'm aware people have had this issue but no suggestions have fixed my problem. This is the error i get back every time:

org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: Unable to find element with id == lst-ib (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)
Command duration or timeout: 3.23 seconds
For documentation on this error, please visit: http://seleniumhq.org/exceptions/no_such_element.html
Build info: version: '3.2.0', revision: '8c03df6b79', time: '2017-02-23 10:51:31 +0000'System info: host: 'DESKTOP-63BRP93', ip: '10.0.110.68', os.name: 'Windows 10', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '10.0', java.version: '1.8.0_121'
Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriverCapabilities [{browserAttachTimeout=0, ie.enableFullPageScreenshot=true, enablePersistentHover=true, ie.forceCreateProcessApi=false, ie.forceShellWindowsApi=false, pageLoadStrategy=normal, ignoreZoomSetting=false, ie.fileUploadDialogTimeout=3000, version=11, platform=WINDOWS, nativeEvents=true, ie.ensureCleanSession=false, elementScrollBehavior=0, ie.browserCommandLineSwitches=, requireWindowFocus=false, browserName=internet explorer, initialBrowserUrl=http://localhost:38992/, javascriptEnabled=true, ignoreProtectedModeSettings=false, enableElementCacheCleanup=true, unexpectedAlertBehaviour=dismiss}]
Session ID: 0fbcebc8-6775-4a6c-b10a-47350502598f
*** Element info: {Using=id, value=lst-ib}
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45) at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:423)

Here is what I've tried/done...

1. Set Enabled Protected Mode to disabled for all zones
2. Set Allow Scripting option on the advanced tab or IE options
3. Tried every IEDriver capability known to man e.g. setCapability(InternetExplorerDriver.IE_ENSURE_CLEAN_SESSION,true);
4. Tried IE11 32 and 64bit
5. Attempted to find an element by, class, tagname and all the rest of the locators to no avail.
6. Added the 2 registry keys BFCACHE for both 32 and 64bit instances of IE
7. Cried a lot

Below is the attached logs and I've located where the code falls over. It seems to be security related but JavaScript is enabled and I don't know where else to look...

T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:529 Browser.cpp(613) Entering Browser::GetDocumentFromWindow
T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:532 Script.cpp(49) Entering Script::Initialize
T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:532 Script.cpp(70) Entering Script::AddArgument(std::wstring)
T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:532 Script.cpp(105) Entering Script::AddArgument(VARIANT)
T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:532 Script.cpp(70) Entering Script::AddArgument(std::wstring)
T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:532 Script.cpp(105) Entering Script::AddArgument(VARIANT)
T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:532 Script.cpp(169) Entering Script::Execute
T 2017-03-06 17:27:41:532 Script.cpp(477) Entering Script::CreateAnonymousFunction
W 2017-03-06 17:27:41:539 Script.cpp(494) -2147024891 [Access is denied.]: Unable to execute code, call to IHTMLWindow2::execScript failed
W 2017-03-06 17:27:41:540 Script.cpp(180) Cannot create anonymous function
W 2017-03-06 17:27:41:540 ElementFinder.cpp(98) A JavaScript error was encountered executing the findElement atom.

If anyone has seen or fixed this issue, please help me!

Thanks

Answer 1

Earlier, I was using IE11 with Selenium WebDriver 2.5.3 and IEDriver -2.53.0. I got the same issue. I changed the capabilities by setting some properties for IE programmatically and it worked. Here's the code snippet:

    DesiredCapabilities caps = DesiredCapabilities.internetExplorer();
    caps.setCapability(InternetExplorerDriver.INITIAL_BROWSER_URL, Configuration.getConfig("My URL"));
    caps.setCapability(InternetExplorerDriver.IGNORE_ZOOM_SETTING, true);