Problem closing IE7

Recently, one of my customers complained of problems when closing Microsoft's latest browser release.

Sure enough, without prejudice of closing procedure, a warning issued: "Internet Explorer 7 has crashed". The warning concluded with a request to inform Microsoft of crash details. Of course, a responsible field engineer would want all IE7 users to not experience the annoyance my client was getting; I am such an engineer, so I allowed the call home.

I re-installed Internet Explorer from Microsoft's update site, but the application continued to complain when closed out. The hint was in "details" about the failing module — ntdll.dll. Reading Microsoft's knowledge base offered no clues. However, I sleuthed a bit and happened across this discussion in the developer's forum.

The culprit was Microsoft, by way of the Google Toolbar bundled in the IE7 installer. I found the Google Toolbar was sporting IE7's logo in the control panel "Add Remove Programs" utility. After removing the add-on and then re-installing it, the Google eyes replaced the Microsoft application logo and life improved.