Microsoft released last week a new version of the Internet Explorer 7 browser, but soon after, testers began to report a very peculiar and inconsistent behavior of the software.

When users updated Internet Explorer 6, programming conflicts meant the browser was very likely to crash, that it failed to display the contents of web pages when following hyperlinks and it was even reported that without any apparent reason, it would open multiple windows without being asked to do so. Microsoft's solution is to delete a specific registry key as explained in a posting on Microsoft's official Internet Explorer Weblog.

For the time being, this version of the software is available only to selected beta testers , so it is very unlikely that this glitch would have affected users. A second beta version of the IE7 browser should be available by the end of Q1 2006. Last week's IE update addressed four security vulnerabilities.