Internet Explorer has stopped working after closing tab or window and how to open IE maximized

Recently, I worked on the following two problems on a Vista machine with a recently updated Internet Explorer browser (from 8 to 9) that had two problems. One, when closing a tab or the Internet Explorer 9 window I would get the following popup message: Internet Explorer has stopped working. That wasn't an intermittent problem. It happened every single time a tab or the window closed. I couldn't blame the user for being annoyed by this. The other problem was when he clicked on the IE shortcut in the taskbar or on the desktop, IE would open in a tiny rectangle box instead of opening maximized.

First, how to fix the "internet explorer has stopped working" error.

Open Internet Explorer. Then click on the gear icon in the top right window to make the Tools menu appear. Then click on internet options to bring up the internet options menu. Click on the advanced tab and check the box under "accelerated graphics" called "use software rendering…" Make sure that is checked then click OK and reboot. After the reboot Internet Explorer worked correctly.

While the above solution worked for my situation, it doesn't fix every situation. You may have an IE startup process that is causing the problem too. In the past I've used autoruns, a handy tool, to find those nasty processes in IE startup and delete them, fixing not only the error after closing IE but also improving overall IE performance. Installing toolbars, addons, etc. often cripples your web browser's performance and can cause weird problems like the error message we focused on in this post. 

Now about the "maximize when opened" solution. There are different solutions for this problem. What worked for this situation I'll offer then I'll follow that with some other possible solutions. Open Internet Explorer and size the window to your liking. Then hold down the ctrl key while clicking the red “x” to close the program. This will set the IE window to open at this setting every time. To makes sure other links and such open the same way dick on the gear icon like you did earlier, click internet options,click "tabs", then select "always open pop-ups in a new tab." Click OK once then one more time in the previous window. I will also say this worked on a Vista machine. I don't know if that makes a difference or not. I do know this next method worked on Windows 7 machines but didn't work on this Vista machine. It's very simple. Open Internet Explorer then click and drag the window to the top of the monitor. It will be maximized. Close it then reopen it and the window should open maximized. That solution worked on a few Windows 7 machines in the past.

There's one more I'll detail below. Go the the desktop and right click on the desktop, click new, then shortcut. Create a short cut to "Program Files/Internet Explorer/iexplore.exe" Right click on the short cut and then select Properties. Click on the tab "Shortcut" and then change the value in the run command to "maximized". Click apply then OK. Now Internet Explorer will open in the maximized state when you click on any short cut to iexplore.exe.

So there you have it! If you have any questions comment below.