Internet Explorer 7 and 8... Black Screen and Tabs?

[WLC-1989]

Hey everyone,

I've been running Vista x64 for a while now, and recently upgraded to SP1, as well as IE8 Beta 1. However, on every installation I've had (including one installed from a friend's disc), I have experienced the following two problems:

1. For no apparent reason, the Internet Explorer window turns black, with part of the frame flashing if I attempt to move the window, though even that action is buggy and unpredictable. It looks almost as if there is some graphical distortion or corruption. I have noticed that this tends to take place when I have a few tabs open, perhaps 4 or more.

2. Every now and then when I'm browsing, a new tab will open or a pop-up window will open. Then, around once every half a second, a new tab will be created. As you can imagine, this leads to the computer slowing down very quickly, as upwards of a hundred tabs can be created within only a short while. When I attempt to close the window, I usually experience the aforementioned black graphical distortion, and the 'close all tabs' confirmation box has no effect, for new tabs are opening even after I click 'close'.

In both cases, I resort to ending that instance of Internet Explorer in the task-manager. Does anyone know why this might be happening? I have searched on Google, though I have yet to find anyone who is experiencing this particular set of problems, which seem closely related.

Oh and may I add that 'switch to Firefox' or Opera isn't the solution I'm looking for.

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Jay]

Maybe a virus from either a site you always visit or a program you always install.

What AV do you use and are you behind a router?

[WLC-1989]

Unfortunately there's no virus; I have tried multiple scans with different AVs, and am currently using NOD32 on a brand new Windows installation. This is also not a site-specific problem. Furthermore, I'm not behind a router, though I'm not sure I see how that would cause the tab/black-out problem?

[Jay]

lol

got me stumped as well. What happens if you don't install IE8 Beta? It could be a bug.

[WLC-1989]

Sorry I didn't make this clear initially: I have this problem on IE7 as well as the IE8 Beta I'm currently running. I've basically tried every permutation of Vista x64, with SP1, without SP1, with IE8, without etc and yet this problem doesn't go away.

I'm wondering if it's perhaps specific to my computer? I'd have thought a software bug (which this seems to be) would have affected more people, but seemingly not. :S

[Jay]

it could be a hardware issue. Load up in safe mode and see if it still does it, if it doesn't it may be a driver issue if it does it could be some really odd hardware issue, possibly the CPU.

[directhex]

do you have UAC enabled? if not, you're gonna wish you did! ie on vista has a "get rid of all the bad **** messing up my IE" button, but it can only work with UAC enabled. that fixes your new tab problem. no UAC... no help, because you've gone out of your way to not be helpable.

as for the white flicker... bad graphics driver, or bad graphics card (disable Aero for a quick fix)

[TheAnimus]

your installing the first public beta on EVERY PC?

This is why i think public betas are often faced with pleb problems.

[aidanjt]

Chances are the IE8 beta overwrote some IE7 libs, so you have a buggy lib messing things up. Don't use beta on production anything, ever, that's what virtual machines are for.

[WLC-1989]

Thanks for your replies. To reitterate: I have this problem when running IE7 and IE8. Furthermore, I have tried running IE7 immediately after installing Windows (i.e. with nothing changed, including UAC), and this problem still occurs. Also I am only trying this on the one PC, by using fresh Vista x64 installations.

Any suggestions? I genuinely have no idea what could be causing this.

[aidanjt]

In that case, I can only suggest updating video drivers, and/or swapping out the video card for testing.

[WLC-1989]

I'd like to add another 'symptom': I've noticed that, when the tabs keep opening by themselves, and I do manage to close the window, another IE window opens and the tabs continue. I am thus forced to close iexplore.exe in Task Manager.

At first I could place the blame with a graphics corruption, but that is almost certainly not the cause of the tab problem, which seems to be linked with the black-out issue.

Any ideas guys? This is really beginning to bug me.

[at81]

Hello
while doing a search on my problems of multiple tabs opening (IE7)
on their own this is the closest I could find. I see this is an older post
WLC-1989 were you ever able to solve your problem??? I don't know what
to do either?