Unable to open link in new tab and won;t open new window

Not sure what happened, but starting this afternoon, Explorer 9 (released version via automatic update) will not open a link in a new tab, nor will it open that line into a new explorer window.

Looked at multiple complaints and fixes for this, none worked (including the scripts).

What happened today: recent automatic windows 7 update to "allow further updates", I used firefox for the first time - note did not set it as the default, there was a java update and an adobe update.

This machine is windows 7 sp1, completely updated 64bit home premium system.

Turned off all the add ons, restarted - didn't fix it. Tried the script for the same problem, that didn't work. All the resetting has done, is removed the tool bars I like to use and it still doesn't work.

Would like to leave explorer 9 as the default, but this is driving me nuts. (already can't use it for some sites due to the way their developers coded page popups - use safari for those)

the new tab is blank, and it just flat out will not open a new window.

If I right mouse copy the short cut and paste it in, it works fine

No, for example go to google news, then mouse click an article, normally this would open this link in a new tab.
Now i just get a blank stuck tab, that is unueable until I select the home location.

Also not working, if I right mouse button the html link for new window, I get nothing

Found lots of complaints on this, but none of the fixes worked.

first one worked, all others gave errors,
still didn't fix the problem

ran as admin in cmd window, nope

get the following errors
the module "actxprxy.dll" was loaded but the call to DLLRegisterServer failed with error code )x80070005

rolled back the system to a previous restore point (5/11/2011) which fixed the problem. This removed an adobe update, java update, and independently removed the google toolbar (which had been on the window for months without issue), though it managed to leave the bing tool bar - which is a very recent addition :) . It did not remove the latest windows 7 update, which fell on 5/16 (which had warned on install that it could not be removed). Some values were changed in the registry.