https://blogs.msdn.com/b/askie/archive/2009/03/09/opening-a-new-tab-may-launch-a-new-process-with-internet-explorer-8-0.aspx

Some application that one of my customers has has this problem when running on Windows 7.

Well, this application is written in Visual Basic 6, which is not supported by Microsoft anymore.

But I heard that some applications are reported to have this problem anyway...

This application works perfectly on Windows 7 before instaling Microsoft Office.

After installing Microsoft Office, the Default Input language value is set to Office IME (I don't know about other languages, but for Korean, this value changes.)

The problem that this change causes is that language setting is automatically changed back to English whenever a user presses "Enter", even when the user wants to keep typing in Korean.

The workaround is to change the "Default input language" value back to "Korean(Korea) - Microsoft IME" (This setting can be found here: Start->Control Panel->Region and Language->Keyboards and Languages->Change Keyboards->General)

One of my customers came to me and asked why IE8 cannot open a 140px wide window.

Well, if you drag IE border and resize IE window to the minimum, it can be as small as 250px wide x 100px tall.

That's the minimum window, which means you cannot 140px wide window anymore with IE7 or later.

But if you use open Method, the constraints are as follows:

As for the height, you can set the value down to 100, not 150.

But these values are for the content, I mean these sizes don't include the frame size. So, the window can be smaller if you drag the window border.

If you want to set the window to the smallest, I think you need to use resizeTo Method

When you use this method, you can set the height to 58px and the width to 230px, which is the smallest content size.

You can also use showModalDialog Method and showModelessDialog Method, and these contraints apply the same to these methods.

So, anyway you cannot open 140px wide window anymore... I think you need to redesign your window.

One of my customers is still using VB6 applications...

And this caused quite serious problems... such as 'crash'...

Well, I know VB6 is not supported by Microsoft anymore... so this article cannot be official but I think it's worth trying this...

If you use non-English application, then VB6 runtime may find your language module, such as VB6KO.dll for Korean.

But, if you look at the 'system32' folder in Windows 7, it doesn't have the file.

If your non-English application crashes pointing at msvbvm60.dll, just have a try copying the localization file... to 'system32' folder.

This was helpful in my case.

Someone brought me an application, an ActiveX application, oops... not the ActiveX itself but the application that the ActiveX control installs.

Well, when the user goes to the web page, the ActiveX checks if the application is properly installed before it tries to run the application.

Usually it worked well on Windows 7 as on Windows XP.

But on some machine, it tries to install the application whenever a user goes to the page.

 Hmmm..... the developer told me that the ActiveX control checks the file under "Program Files" folder. After that, if the file is not of the latest version, then the ActiveX control tries to install the application.

Firstly, I compared some IE's security settings between the two machines but it didn't work.

So, I monitored iexplore.exe process with Process Monitor tool and I found that it looks up the virtualized files.

Ah.... I see... I don't know the exact reason but... my guess is for some reasons, the application installer could not get the admin privilege when it tried to install the application so the files were written to the virtualized folder. The the ActiveX sees the virtualized file and the installer writes under "Program Files" folder, the older file could not be updated...

After deleting the virtualized folder, everything's fine...!!!

Check "Compatibility Files" button in Explorer, if you have similar problems...

Someone brought me an application complaining that it fails while installing MSVBVM60.dll...

Well, I think this application tries to write this file under System32 folder before running the application, because it needed this file but they found that some Windows XP machines don't have it.

I think the install application was detected as an "installer" by Windows 7, it won't have any problem as Windows applies a shim to make the application get succeed message returned without actually writing the file under System32 folder.

This document explains Windows Resouce Protection (WRP)

 Windows Resource Protection

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc185681(VS.85).aspx

I met customers saying that their pop up window got wider and taller after installing IE7 or IE8.

Yes, as for getting taller (larger in height), IE7's window height accounts for the content area only, not including the frame.

This can cause the window size changes. 

And IE7 also introduced minimum window sizes contraints.

If you encounter these kinds of problems, please check if these documents are helpful.

dialogHeight Property

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533724(VS.85).aspx 

dialogWidth Property

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533727(VS.85).aspx

 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536651(VS.85).aspx

I've tested an application built for Windows XP on Windows 7 machine.

The application failed silently on Windows 7 so I checked event log. There was no hint.

So, I downloaded application verifier on the machine and attached the application to it.

I didn't give any meaningful report. So I even attached the application to Windbg. But I cannot find where I should look into the application.

Later, we decided to build the application on Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2008 so we installed VS2008 on the machine.

And tried to build the application and managed to succeed in building it. And ran it in VS2008 with the debugger.

Hmm.... it succeeded in running.... as it worked on Windows XP.

But without Visual Studio? It failed again...! What's happening here?

The answer was "Application Verifier". Not until I deleted the applicaiton from Application Verifier and close Application Verifier to save the settings, I could run the application as it runs within VS.

My guess is the application has some system specific settings with it at the beginning and when I attached it to Verfier, it saved the first settings.

But by building again with VS 2008, the settings were updated. However, Application Verifer kicked in with old settings whenever the application was launched.

If you come across a similar problem, please try to build the application on Windows 7 without Application Verifier.

When I came back, the machine was rebooting... just after the animation 'Starting Windows...'

And next time, it asked me if I will boot the machine in safe mode...

I chose safe mode and rebooted...

But... it didn't work....

 Hmmm.... 'do I have to re-install this RC machine?' 'Is this because of the bug that RC might have?'...

At that point, It occurred to me that I ran 'verifier.exe' the previous day...

So I booted the machine in safe mode and ran verifier again and deleted the configuration that I had made...

Then... my machine came back to the normal state... :)

If your machine suffers the same... please check the verifier...

Well, when their application tries to execute this code, it failes with 'invalide argument' error:

document.domain = somevalue;

Their web application works perfectly on IE6 and now they are considering moving to IE8.

Do you know why this fails?

This is explained in IE team blog as follows:

In Internet Explorer 7, the following set of calls would succeed:

// initial document.domain is app1.example.com
document.domain = "app1.example.com";  // 1. Domain property set to default value
document.domain = "example.com";        // 2. “Loosen” domain
document.domain = "app1.example.com";          // 3. “Tighten” domain

In Internet Explorer 8 and other browsers, the 3^rd assignment will throw an exception, because app1.example.com is not a suffix of the then-current value, example.com.

https://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/09/02/ie8-security-part-vi-beta-2-update.aspx

In this case, I think the developer who understands the application needs to find how to mitigate this issue, considering using  postMessage() or XDomainRequest.