IE 8 gets white patch on window and locks up.

A question for IE8 users...

Twice now I've gone to websites and have had a browser lockup that's required a system reboot to escape. What happens is that I will follow a link and the browser will load it up apparently normally except that I can't scroll the page. A few seconds will go by and then the entire browser window will be covered by a semi-transparent white patch that prevents me from closing the tabs, hitting any of the buttons or closing the browser. The only way out of it is to reboot...

I've never seen this before.... can anyone tell me what it is?

(And no I'm not going to post the links because I don't want to give you the problem...)

Hello there!

When did this problem arise? Did you install any add-ons recently?

alwinwinjoe said:

Hello there!

When did this problem arise? Did you install any add-ons recently?

Only Flash 10... It's a fresh install, done this morning. I haven't even installed any of my software yet. I'm pretty sure this is either a browser problem or some kind of malicious script on a couple of websites... Including some pages at Tom's Hardware...

Try this. In Tools-Internet Options-Advanced tab, uncheck "Disable Script debugging (Internet explorer)" and "Disable Script Debugging (Other)" under "Browsing". In the same tab, under "Security", uncheck "Enable memory protection to mitigate online attack".

Bill2 said:

Try this. In Tools-Internet Options-Advanced tab, uncheck "Disable Script debugging (Internet explorer)" and "Disable Script Debugging (Other)" under "Browsing". In the same tab, under "Security", uncheck "Enable memory protection to mitigate online attack".

Nice catch... I disabled the script debugging and went to the page...

"Error 756 , Object expected"

It turns out there's an error on the webpage that right at the point the browser freezes up... Now the question becomes "Why isn't IE8 catching it?"

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

CommonTater said:

alwinwinjoe said:

Hello there!

When did this problem arise? Did you install any add-ons recently?

Only Flash 10... It's a fresh install, done this morning. I haven't even installed any of my software yet. I'm pretty sure this is either a browser problem or some kind of malicious script on a couple of websites... Including some pages at Tom's Hardware...

I'm glad you posted this, because I had the exact same thing happen to me at Tom's Hardware just a few days ago. I thought I got infected somehow, so I immediately ran a full system scan with Norton 2010. Nothing came up.

Should we run those settings all the time, and are they safe?

Try a couple more things.

1) In IE, go to Tools-Internet Options-Security tab and uncheck "Enable Protected Mode".
2) Add this website to trusted sites.

MadMaxData said:

I'm glad you posted this, because I had the exact same thing happen to me at Tom's Hardware just a few days ago. I thought I got infected somehow, so I immediately ran a full system scan with Norton 2010. Nothing came up.

Should we run those settings all the time, and are they safe?

Safe yes... but likely to be quite annoying. There is an option in the Advanced tab to show messages about every script error, but they come too late... the damage is already done.

I'm wondering if it's not some sleezy advertiser exploiting a weakness or something... I've seen it on a couple of different sites, now. On one if you wait it out (nearly a minute) an ad appears and you're supposed to click in the corner to see the ad before proceeding...

Massively annoying... and it breaks the first rule of good business...
"Never piss off the customer."

But... thanks to our friend, at least we now know it's not a browser issue.

Yeah, I was glad to see it wasn't a browser issue too. However, I'm not messing with my settings in IE. I'll just stop visiting Tom's Hardware. His loss, as he should have consider pissing off the customer like you said.

You have to REALLY convince me of certain settings before I change them. My machine runs almost everything default. It's how I prefer it.

MadMaxData said:

Yeah, I was glad to see it wasn't a browser issue too. However, I'm not messing with my settings in IE. I'll just stop visiting Tom's Hardware. His loss, as he should have consider pissing off the customer like you said.

You have to REALLY convince me of certain settings before I change them. My machine runs almost everything default. It's how I prefer it.

Hmmm... See now you and are different on that one... At first I'm all changes and tweaks, gotta get the most out of it, make it behave the way I want, etc. Over time as I find less and less to grumble about I find myself tapering off and just leaving the systems as-is.

When I first jumped to XP I was tweaking away like crazy for the first week, drove everyone mad with me constantly at it... I probably reinstalled XP 10 times in the first week... but when I got it all figured out, I ran the same install for several years without any problems at all. In fact I ran a single install of win2000 from 1999 to 2006 when I switched to XP and ran a single install of it until 2 weeks ago. Now of course the cycle is repeating... I'm on my third Win 7 setup and the urge to mess with stuff is starting to taper off... I wonder how long I'll end up runnig this one....