IE patch causes crashes

There are reports that last week’s security patch for Internet Explorer may have caused some unforeseen problems for many IE users, both on Windows XP and on Vista. Some users report not being able to connect to Web sites at all on occasion, and random browser crashes.

The IE security update attempted to fix bugs in IE6 and IE 7. However, users started posting reports of IE 6, IE 7, and the Messenger mail client not working to the Microsoft Developer Network IE blog and the Microsoft Windows Update newsgroup immediately following installation of the patch.

The patch apparently introduced a bug that causes a particular problem for sites that use a secure HTTP connection to pass credentials before loading a nonsecure page — common with some Web single-sign-on systems and consumer single-sign-ons like Microsoft Passport. That could prove to be a problem for enterprise users who access portal-based applications — especially if they’re set as the default opening homepage for users.

So if you’re still planning to roll out last Tuesday’s patches, be sure to run a full test of IE on internal Web applications. Uninstalling appears to fix the problem, as does a Windows registry hack — so if you’ve got users who auto-updated, you at least have some workaround options.

As an added help desk fun bonus, my system’s security settings seemed to be reset after the update, and the pop-up blocker started blocking menu pop-ups from within one of my most-used internal Web-based applications. So you may get a rash of help desk calls from users confused about why their applications aren’t working if they haven’t paid attention to that bar that appears at the top of the browser window when IE blocks content.