I wonder if you guys can help me figure out how to google this.
I have Vista. Very occasionally (maybe three times since I got my new machine, which works out to a little less than once a month) something very strange happens while I am using Explorer. I will link to a page, and Explorer will start spawning window after window, each displaying a new copy of the page. I have not found a way to get out of this cycle other than by switching the machine off! (The Start menu sub-menu that lets me log out of my account is not accessible once this bug takes effect. There is probably a keyboard shortcut for logging out, but I don’t know it.)
I don’t know how many window it has opened due to this bug but it seems likely that it got up to at least a hundred.
I am curious to know whether I am the only person in the entire world who is having this happen to them, but I can not figure out the right combination of keywords for google. Any ideas?
-FrL-
ETA: Found this but the few who responded there mistakenly attributed the problem to malware. That’s not the problem as far as I can tell.
When you say you “link” to a page, do you mean as in “create a link for, say, the SDMB”, like with [url= and everything? Or do you mean you “click on a link in a web page so as to open a different page in another window”?
If it’s the former, I got nuttin’.
But if it’s when you click on a link in a window in order to go to another web page, the first thing I’d try would be a different keyboard. And the second thing I’d try would be a different mouse.
Stuck keyboards and dirty mice have ruined many a computer session for me in the past, spawning seemingly inexplicable behavior that magically went away once the Pepsi was cleaned out from between the p and ; keys.
Actually I misspoke. When it happens, it’s right after I have right clicked on a link and selected “open in new tab.” It may or may not succeed in opening a new tab, I’ve never paid attention to make sure. But in addition, it opens window after window (not tab after tab) containing the same page I was trying to open in a tab.
-Kris
Never had that happen. I would try pressing Esc several times, and Left-click and right-clicking the mouse several times.
You can hit Alt-F4 to close the topmost window, but I doubt if you could keep up with all the spawning windows.
Your problem may be virus or spyware related. Is your Internet Explorer up to date? One workaround would be to use Firefox, it’s a much more secure browser. Everyone I have given it to has much less problems with the Internet.