Symptom

When you open a new tab in Internet Explorer 7, the You've opened a new tab message appears, and you're unable to turn off this option even though the option Don't show this page again is selected.

Workaround

The preference may not be saved due to a script error in the res://ieframe.dll/tabswelcome.htm page. As a workaround, you may alter the registry directly or use the REG files below to configure this setting.

  • Click Start, Run and type regedit.exe
  • Navigate to the following branch:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ TabbedBrowsing

  • Create a REG_DWORD value named ShowTabsWelcome
  • Leave the Value data for ShowTabsWelcome as 0
  • Exit the Registry Editor.

More information

To know why this problem occurs in the first place, please read my blog post Why doesn't the You've opened a new tab message go away?

Automate

You can automate the above using the .REG files available in the Attachments section of this article.