# What causes a spontaneous cascade of IE windows? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 31, 2008, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-causes-a-spontaneous-cascade-of-ie-windows/470422 "2008-10-31T13:22:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rainy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@rainy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rainy)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-causes-a-spontaneous-cascade-of-ie-windows/470422/1 "2008-10-31T13:22:46Z")
Sometimes this happens to me, not often, maybe 2 or 3 time a year. But it always makes me paranoid my computer is infected with some bug. Here’s how it goes; I will go to a web page, or possibly it happens just as I am navigating away from it and suddenly IE starts opening windows, dozens and dozens of them cascading all over my desktop. They are all seemingly empty, but I’m usually in no mood to see what they are opening up. It happen just this morning while reading CaerieD’s post in this thread (post 29) > **[Your Celebrity Crush That Makes Others Say "WTF?"](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=490177)** > > You know that actor, musician, athlete, etc. that you think is incredibly sexy but everyone else thinks that you’re a bit insane to find him/her slightly attractive. Mine is Tom Chaplin, lead singer of Keane, front and center here. I say he’s tall,... It links to an IMDB page, and I am on IMDB all the time so I trust that site. What’s up; some kind of bug, or just a glitch? -rainy ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-causes-a-spontaneous-cascade-of-ie-windows/470422/2 "2008-10-31T15:25:09Z")
I’m pretty sure that if it is spontaneous, by definition nothing is _causing_ it 😉 From your description, it sounds like a nasty batch of cascading pop-up windows, the code for the creation of which would be embedded in the web page that you first go to. Or you could be infected with malware that generates them. Since you’re using Internet Explorer, I assume you’re running some flavor of Windows. Windows is a notoriously common target of malware infections. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-causes-a-spontaneous-cascade-of-ie-windows/470422/3 "2008-10-31T15:26:03Z")
Hard to say. IMDB does run ads from other places that are less-than-well-written scriptwise. E.g., some Flash ads will hijack keyboard entry preventing typing into the search box. (RottenTomatoes has lately been running click-thru ads that are especially poorly written.) Since I have popups turned off and use Opera, I don’t see that sort of thing, even on questionable sites. Once in a while, even a well policed site gets tricked into linking to ads from a 3rd party that does bad stuff. It is more likely to be a local problem, which means that you might have something bad on your 'puter. Run hijack this, look up _everything_ it finds. [Malwarebytes](http://www.download.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html) is particularly good at getting rid of most evil thingies. The new pages being blank can be caused by several things. E.g., the sites are blocked in your hosts file or by your firewall. Or the sites have been taken down. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-causes-a-spontaneous-cascade-of-ie-windows/470422/4 "2008-10-31T16:29:11Z")
We’ve had this a couple of times when, IIRC, it turned out to be some buggy add-on or toolbar. Sorry, I can’t remember any more than that. Do you have anything like that installed? ---
**Author:** ![rainy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@rainy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rainy)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-causes-a-spontaneous-cascade-of-ie-windows/470422/5 "2008-11-03T21:40:03Z")
> [@Usram](#): > > We’ve had this a couple of times when, IIRC, it turned out to be some buggy add-on or toolbar. Sorry, I can’t remember any more than that. Do you have anything like that installed? I did end up with the Yahoo tool bar when I created a Yahoon groups account.