Internet Explorer 9 window crashes in Windows 7. Why?

You may typically get one of the errors below or the IE window might freeze or restart without an error message.

“Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close.”

“Internet Explorer has stopped responding”

This is typically due to incompatible add-ons or toolbars or an incompatible display adapter. Internet Explorer uses the graphics chipset for hardware acceleration and these issues might happen due to an older and/or incompatible driver.

You can typically resolve these issues using the following steps in the given order.

Method 1: No Add-ons Mode

Click Start. Type in "iexplorer.exe -extoff" and press enter. This will open IE in No Add-ons mode. Check if the crashes or performance issues happy while on this mode.
If there are no issues when using this mode, you can use the addon manager to disable all unwanted add-ons.

To do this, follow these steps:

Open Internet Explorer 9. Click the tools button (wheel button at the right hand side corner), and then click Manage Add-ons. On the Show drop-down menu, select All add-ons to display all add-ons that are installed on the computer. Look for each item in the list, select the add-on, and then click Disable in the Information window.
When you have disabled all the items in this list, click OK.
Exit and then restart Internet Explorer.

Method 2: Reset Internet Explorer Settings

To use the Reset Internet Explorer Settings feature from Control Panel, follow these steps:
Exit all programs, including Internet Explorer (if it is running).

Click Start, type the following command in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER:
    inetcpl.cpl

The Internet Options dialog box appears.
Click the Advanced tab, Under Reset Internet Explorer settings, click Reset.
Then click Reset again. When Internet Explorer finishes resetting the settings, click Close in the Reset Internet Explorer Settings dialog box. Start Internet Explorer again.

Please note that running RIES (Reset Internet Explorer Settings) will reset all user-defined settings including those set by installed extensions, toolbars and other add-ons to IE Defaults. This includes all Security, Privacy and Zone settings. Also this will clear browsing history, delete all temporary Internet Files, cookies, form data and especially all stored passwords.

However, RIES does not clear Favorites or Subscribed Feeds.

Method 3: Software Rendering

If resetting IE or No Add-ons mode does not resolve the issue for you then it could be a compatibility issue with the Graphics card.

To resolve this, Click Start, type the following command in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER: inetcpl.cpl

Under Internet Options, click the advanced tab. Under 'Accelerated Graphics', click on the checkbox next to 'Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering*'. Ensuring that it is checked, click on OK. Close Internet options.

Now open Internet Explorer 9. It should now work without any issues.