When you open a new tab in Internet Explorer 7, does the You’ve opened a new tab message appear every time, and are you unable to turn off this option? Earlier, I documented a workaround for this problem in the article "You’ve opened a new tab" message appears whenever a new tab is opened in Internet Explorer. But wondered why this problem occurs?
As this problem was seen in one of my systems, I decided to research this issue further. In my another computer which is running the same Operating System, Service Pack, and Internet Explorer version as my main computer, the setting does work perfectly. Whereas in my main computer, a script error occurred when I click the Close button after putting a checkmark near Don’t show this page again.
Little bit of detective work
To begin with, I compared the IE related DLLs (mainly ieframe.dll) in both the systems. However the file size, ordinal Numbers and everything were matching exactly. At this point, my fellow MS-MVP Robert Aldwinckle gave a good suggestion that I run a script debugger. The debugger showed this:
We did not know where this function is located, and how to proceed further.
Turning point
I loaded up the excellent RegMon utility and started monitoring iexplore.exe. RegMon showed iexplore.exe reading the following registry value:
HKCR\TypeLib\{EAB22AC0-30C1-11CF-A7EB-0000C05BAE0B}\1.1\0\win32
In the subject computer, the (default) value data was pointing to C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll
I ran RegMon in my other system in which the option worked fine. In the working computer, the (default) value data was set as C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieframe.dll
In the subject computer, I changed the (default) value to ieframe.dll, and Voila!, the problem was solved.
Possible causes that I can think of:
- I may have registered shdocvw.dll to fix a different problem after Internet Explorer 7 was installed.
- Or the Internet Explorer 7 setup might have failed to update the registry.
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Hey that worked very well! Thanks man.
I can’t believe it. I downloaded IE8 now that it’s officially released and guess what: I can’t get rid of “about:Tabs”. Why is it always like this?
Thank you. This solved my problem as well. Excellent work on this fine site!
Thanks so much! That had been getting on my nerves (and affecting my ability to add a new search provider).
You need to make sure that you launch the 64Bit version of IE7, once you’ve made the change in the registry. This will commit the change for both versions of IE.
That was doing my head right in! Thanks for posting this. I’ve just started running XP x64 (don’t know if thats the problem) never seen it before. It needed to be changed to “C:\WINDOWS\SysWow64\ieframe.dll” for me at the same address. Thanks again.
Worked just as explained. Had the occurrence only one more time after I changed the registry entry, then… never again! Thanks!
This solution worked perfectly! Be aware that once you do the solution, you will see the “You’ve opened a new tab” message one more time before you notice the problem is solved.