Patch causes glitches with beta version of IE browser

Microsoft is receiving scattered reports that one of the security patches issued last week for Internet Explorer (IE) is causing problems for users testing a new beta version of the browser alongside the existing version, according to a company blogger.

Links come up blank, multiple windows open when the browser is started, or the browser "hangs," wrote Jeremy Dallman, project manager for IE security bulletins, on a Microsoft blog on Friday.

The problem comes when a user attempts to run the beta 1 version of IE 7 in "an unsupported side-by-side configuration with a version of IE 6." The IE 7 beta version puts a registry key on the machine the first time the IE 7 ".exe" file is run, and that key will not be configured correctly if an unsupported side-by-side install is used, Dallman wrote.

The key will be removed when the installer is used to run IE 7 Beta 1, Dallman wrote. To fix the problem, IE 7 should be uninstalled and then reinstalled, Dallman wrote.

The full details of the posting are available at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/.