Why does IE decide to randomly open 50 new tabs of the last page I was on?

use firefox? if you have a reason not to use firefox, try reinstalling.

Have you been to any questionable sites? Sounds like a browser hijacker so try an anti-virus scan.

Are you using the IE7Pro plugin with the “Restore last sessions automatically” option enabled?

@Lightlyseared: I got hijacked a couple of months ago, but I had my laptop cleansed. I don’t know where I got it from though, I haven’t been on any questionable sites.

@robmandu: Yes, but once it starts opening the tabs, you can’t do anything to make it stop. You can’t just shut down the page and restore to the last session… sadly.

Well, if you can’t get into IE long enough to modify the preferences for IE7Pro, then you can…

1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs
2. Select IE7Pro and uninstall it

It’s a great plugin. Hopefully you’d be able to launch IE at that point and see it behave “normally”. Then you could possibly attempt re-installing IE7Pro.

The only question I would have at that point is if the uninstaller left IE7Pro’s previous settings laying around (like in the Registry), then the new install might see those and revert to relaunching the 50 tabs again. Still, it’d be worth the effort to try if nothing else works for you.

Seriously, get Firefox. Much better.

I had a virus/trojan whatever it was, it hijacked my IE, which I used to check something.. can’t remember what it was but firefox didn’t work on the site at the time, but after closing it IE would pop up again and just keep adding tabs like mad and I couldn’t close out of it.

I don’t remember what I did, I think I booted up in safe mode and ran spybot and some registry cleaners and I finally figured out what it was and removed it and booted back up normally and it was all fine.

I have firefox, I suppose I’m kind of attatched to IE. I’ll have to start making the transition.

@robmandu: It behaves normally most of the time. The glitch doesn’t occur all the time, only about once a day.

Sounds like the effect of some virus or spyware infiltration, or possibly you loaded a really bad JavaScript recently, and it hasn’t being reloaded as a tab when you relaunch IE, maybe. Try running your favorite antivirus app, Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware, and clear all your Internet Temporary Files.