My company recently gave me a new laptop running WinXP Pro SP2, and
IE6. I installed IE7 from the Microsoft site, and ran all updates
(except SP3). I then started noticing that when I would go to the
comcast.net site and attempt to access my webmail, IE7 would close as
soon as I clicked comcast's little e-mail widget. No error message, no
entries in system or application event logs. I researched the problem,
found some threads having to do with add-ons, so I tried disabling add-
ons to see if that would fix it. I disabled them one-by-one,
restarting IE each time in between, but IE kept closing. I found a
thread talking about an issue with urlmon.dll, tried that recommended
fix, and still no joy.

While searching around, I found out about IE7Pro, and decided to try
it out. If nothing else, I could take advantage of the crash recovery
feature, as well as inline search. This solved the problem on the
comcast site. Sort of - clicking the widget just takes me to the email
page, instead of opening the little widget. I can live with that.

What I can't live with is the behavior that occurs on other sites.
Again, while researching this, I found a thread about Flash version
being an issue, so I thought I'd upgrade the Flash version on my PC. I
went to the Adobe site, clicked the link for the free Flash player,
then clicked the download link on that page. Again, IE7 closed with no
error, no entries in the event log. I used FireFox to go back to the
same spot and do the download, and noticed that at the point that IE7
closed, FireFox was popping up the information bar, letting me know
that the site needed to install an ActiveX control.

My continued research has found nothing enlightening on this. I talked
to our IT folks, who had no clue. I've also found out that there are
other folks here with the same problem. Other than use FireFox, what
do we do? - Pat