Internet explorer closes by itself

[nlawalker]

Hi everyone:

I hope I can give you enough information about this problem; my sister's experiencing it and I can't get to her computer to see the problem myself.

She says that whenever she opens internet explorer, it closes itself as soon as it loads a page. She said if she can hit stop or reload before it closes, it won't close. I had her type "explorer" in the run window to open a standard browser window, and from there I had her turn on the address bar and try a website. Strangely, that worked fine. She is using the standard internet shortcuts to get to internet explorer: quick launch, desktop, and start button. Just to see, I had her try typing iexplore in the Run window and going from there, but it does the same thing.

She has fully updated Norton Antivirus software and has run a full scan, came up with nothing.

Any ideas? She said it just started happening one day. She said she also tried a system restore to about two weeks prior, and that didn't work either.

NW

[CSC2100]

Try and have her run some software like Ad-Aware or Spybot S&D on her pc while she isn't connected to the internet. This may correct the problem. Doesn't sound like a virus unless she is getting some type of error IE closes.

[nlawalker]

Please, can anyone help on this? It's really frustrating. I remote connected to her computer and saw it for myself. If a page loads completely, IE shuts itself down. If you hit "refresh" before it loads, it will refresh the page and then load up just fine and sit there. But, if you click on a link or try to open any other address, it does the same thing.

She can't get on the internet to download adaware.

This only happens using Internet explorer. If she runs "explorer" from the run menu and uses the address bar there to go places on the internet, it works fine.

I'm having her install netscape as a workaround to see if that works in the meantime. She also tried system restoring to a point about two weeks before any of this started happening: no dice.

I'm out of ideas, except to reformat, which it needs anyway. Anyone else have any ideas?

NW

[glc]

If you can remote connect - can't you push Spybot or Ad-Aware over to it? Try running a repair on IE.

[SimonFF]

Try installing IE again over the top of it.

[nlawalker]

Good ideas... how do you repair or reinstall IE?

NW

[glc]

If IE is listed in add/remove programs and you click add/remove, repair should be an option along with restore previous version. Try repair first, if it's still hosed, restore previous version and test - if it's fixed you can then reinstall the new version through Windows Update or leave it alone, your choice.