Even with Internet Explorer 8 in the oven, and Beta 2 available for download since the end of August 2008, Microsoft is not losing focus of IE7. As of September 10, the Redmond company started offering a fix for a memory leak affecting Internet Explorer 7 while running on Windows XP, including Service Pack2 and SP3, and Windows Server 2003. The hotfix delivered is available exclusively for the precursors of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and not for the latest versions of the Windows Client and Server operating system. At the same time, Microsoft is providing the resolve only for IE7, and there is nothing yet for IE8.

“Assume that on a computer that is running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you have Windows Internet Explorer 7 installed. After you run Internet Explorer 7 for a long time, you notice that system performance gradually decreases. Additionally, Internet Explorer becomes unstable or crashes. If you use Performance Monitor (Perfmon.exe) to monitor Internet Explorer, you see that the Internet Explorer process consumes many virtual bytes,” the company revealed.

The memory leakage is generated only by the amount of time that IE7 runs continuously and not by any other factor. Microsoft already has a hotfix in place for a memory leak caused by the Msctf.dll component associated with the poor management of memory allocation when windows are created and destroyed by the WebBrowser control application. However, implementing hotfix KB943510 does nothing to resolve the issue described by Microsoft in KB956625. In addition to the hotfix, Microsoft is also offering a workaround to resolve the issue.

“To work around this problem, use one of the following methods: Disable the advanced text services feature. Click Start, Control Panel; Regional and Language Options; the Languages tab; Details; and then Advanced tab. Under System Configuration, click to select the Turn off advanced text services check box. [At the same time users can] edit the LoadIMM registry entry. Click Start, Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\IMM. In the details pane, double-click the LoadIMM entry. In the Value data box, type 0x0, and then click OK.”

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is available for download from here.
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 is available for download here.