Windows 7: IE 8 & 9 crash when opening a new tab

I've been testing IE 9 Beta, like it very much. A few days ago, after a restart, it started to act strange.

As long as I only have one tab open, it behaves normally. All menus work, can go back to last page, write addresses on address bar i.e. totally normal behavior. Only noticeable change is that when links earlier opened in a new tab, they now open in a new window. I can still open a link in a new tab from right click context menu. I can also close IE normally as long I only have one tab.

But if I click the new tab button, I'm screwed After that, I can still surf the first tab I had open, click links on that page and so on, but all menus, favorite bar and address bar are disabled. Also back and next buttons are disabled, I can only go back to the last page from context menu. Close, minimize and maximize/restore buttons are disabled. Right clicking IE in Taskbar and choosing Close only gives audio signal, one beep. Only way to close is from Task Manager, where at this point always is at least four or five iexplore processes. Ending processes one by one causes IE to show "This tab has been recovered" message, and after the last process is ended the IE finally closes.

What I have tried:
- reset IE9, no effect
- sfc /scannow, no effect
- uninstall IE9, return to IE8 > the issue stays
- run sfc /scannow after reverting to IE8, no effect
- reinstall IE9, the problem's still there

Please, all ideas welcome.

Kari

Not sure where to even start...
did you get this update initially?

I do not see that update on my update history.

So what's the overall goal here?...

Figure out how things borked?
Get 8 back to proper form?
Get 9 back to proper form?

Get either IE8 or IE9 to work. At the moment they are unusable because limited only to one tab.

If I read right, you have 9 back on? Want to see if that update does anything for stability?

If it doesn't, only thing I could try would be to remove both 9 and 8 and, reinstall 8. I'll keep pokin around for something.

edit:
have you tried running either in no-addon mode?
anything in event viewer for appcrash?

The issue exists also when running without add-ons. No IE related entries in Event Viewer. At the moment back in IE8, not reinstalled IE9.

Does it repro if you add the following registry value (for testing - not meant to be left around, of course):
Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
Value: TabProcGrowth
Type: REG_DWORD
Data: 0

Yes. Issue remains, behavior as before.

OK, so it's not a process issue (TabProcGrowth puts the frame process and any windows or tabs all in the same process, versus process per tab or security zone). That really only leaves registration on hlink/actxprxy/ieframe that could be the culprit. Assuming you've already run a reset on all IE settings, you probably want to run regsvr32 on hlink.dll, actxprxy.dll, and regsvr32 /i /n ieframe.dll to see if it perhaps changes the behavior.