Wiindows Update 9/12/17 has killed IE

This week's big patch installed unexpectedly fast considering the list of issues it claims to address, but when the PC came back up, IE was dead. The program file is still there but clicking it gives only a brief hourglass (and brief presence in Task Manager), then nothing. Same situation on both my desktop and laptop.

Uninstalling the patch brought it back, but when it reupdated shortly thereafter IE was gone again.

Minor possible clue: After the first patch, Edge was also unreponsive (it would open, but not browse anywhere). The re-update, strangely, brought it back. Still no IE, which I continue to need, for one (daily and work-related) task.

Any ideas? I know MS wants us all to adore Edge but this probably ain't the best way to go about that.

This is solved, with the help of user ricar0 on Tom's Hardware. The source of problem -- as far-fetched as it sounds -- is with the layout of tabs in IE. There's some issue with the latest update that paralyzes IE if you have its tabs set to display on a separate row. You can fix this by either uninstalling the update and unchecking Show Tabs on a Separate Row (right-click menu from any tab), then re-updating, or by editing the registry as explained here.

mark99k said:

The source of problem -- as far-fetched as it sounds -- is with the layout of tabs in IE.

Not that far fetched. The release notes for this update specifically state one of the things updated was...

Improvements and fixes
...
Updates to Internet Explorer 11’s navigation bar with search box.

Cumulative Update KB4038788 Windows 10 v1703 Build 15063.608

A similar IE 11 patch was in the update for Windows 7 where it worked as intended, apparently. After the update this popup appeared on opening IE (I'm guessing that was what was intended to happen in Windows 10 too).



Fortunately my Win10 IE was already set to have tabs on the same row, so apart from some puzzlement I had no problems.

Bree said:

Subtle change, and took a while to realise what had changed. Took even longer to find and untick the setting to put it back the way I had it before...

Cumulative Update KB4038788 Windows 10 v1703 Build 15063.608

Uh, so it deesn't seem bizarre to you that one of two supposedly legitimate options for a program's tab display would prevent said program from even opening?

The fact that a tab change is shown as an update can't possibly justify this bug.

mark99k said:

Uh, so it deesn't seem bizarre to you that one of two supposedly legitimate options for a program's tab display would prevent said program from even opening?

It doesn't for me. I can change from one row to two, close IE then open it without a problem. It opens fine regardless of whether I set it to one or two rows.

This is probably because I had is set to one before the update which was luckily the 'safer' option - it seems that those who suffered problems were the ones who had it set for two rows before the update.