Desktop shortcuts stop working after IE opened

[emsbronco]

OK, this is a strange one that a client dropped off today. I've done some searches, but can't seen to find anything that matches so far, but the keywords for this issue are also difficult to sort through. Of course, I'm also a bit overworked this week, so I may just be missing something simple.

So, here's the system:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
IE 8
Windows Updates fully up to date
AVG 9 Free

The problem:
Everything works fine, until IE 8 is closed.
I can boot the system up normally, everything works fine. All desktop shortcuts work without an issue, etc.

Open up an IE 8. Everything still works OK. Browsing is fine. No unusual toolbars, no signs of DNS hijacking, etc. Looks clean and runs pretty quick. If I minimize IE and click on a desktop shortcut, they work.

Close IE 8. Now, none of the desktop shortcuts work, Right click on desktop is disabled. But, I can open up the executables from the start menu and can right click on items int he start menu and that works OK.

I have done the following:
Reboot system - I can repeat the scenario above
reset IE 8 - no change in behavior
AVG scan - clean
Malwarebytes scan - clean
checked network activity, nothing usual seen there either.
SAS - restore Desktop Policies fixes the issue temporarily. Restart IE and close it, the restriction comes back.
HJT - does not show anything that jumps out at me - basically looks clean.

So, I'm stumped on this. With no signs of an infection, and the AVG logs show no history of any infections, I can't see that as the problem. The browser seems to be clean also.

So, any other ideas?

[NYJimbo]

This has been reported many times with win7 and IE8, I think its going to end up being something MS needs to fix with a patch.

Can you use Firefox without any issue?.

If its possible to downgrade to IE7, do it and see if the issue goes away and see if the client can live with that for now.

[emsbronco]

Thanks. I'm surprised I haven't come across this issue yet. But, you did give me a different avenue to go down and I found a post of the technet forums that described a similar issue.

So, I dug into this a bit more this morning, after my morning caffeine ritual, and I think I have fixed this.

I went into task manager and noticed that IE still had instances open. When I killed those instances, all of the desktop clicking and right clicking I tried opened up.

I reinstalled IE 8 and reapplied all of the updates. So far so good.

I don't think this is an issue that MS will address because it does not seem too widespread...and I actually think it was some kind of plugin or remnant of a plugin causing this.

[vdub12]

Sounds like IE was hanging up during closing. good catch I will have to keep an eye out for that.

[NYJimbo]

I don't think this is an issue that MS will address because it does not seem too widespread...and I actually think it was some kind of plugin or remnant of a plugin causing this.

Something similiar happened in vista and the same issue (dead desktop) and then MS released some kind of patch. It was a layering issue or memory leak or something.