IE7 keeps opening pages by itself

I use IE 7 on my Pc and about the beginning od May IE went crazy for no apparent reason, it starts opening webpages by itself (or refreshing the same webpage), if you close it , after a few seconds the same webpage will open again. They are blank pages at first and then once they have loaded they are just the original page I’ve opened up.

It only happens in IE (Firefox, msn, yahoo and chrome are OK) and also from within AOL, it will open IE and go to the page I was trying to browse in AOL and keep opening up tab after tab and after a few tabs a blank page tab opens then it goes back to opening up the page I was trying to browse. What’s interesting after closing it with Task Manager after a few seconds IE will reopen on its own and continue where it left off. This is maddening.

The only way to stop it is to reboot the PC. I have Trend Micro Internet Security 2010, Spybot Search and Destroy and SuperantiSpyware and I have scanned my entire computer with each and they did not find any troyans or malwares or viruses at all.

This is the first time in ten years that I have been using different versions of IE that I see this strange issue. Many other people are posting the same complaint in other forums and to date nobody have found a solution. Some say it could be some virus named "vundu" or the conflickr, other say it could be some bug due to a bad recent microsoft update for IE7 (some people even says that IE8 is having the same problem), others say that they are Chinese hackers. Nobody knows. Trend Micro even provided me with link to download their HiJackThis and I ran it and sent them the Log and they only found 2 or 3 suspicious hidden files but I clarified to them that these were valid files from legit applications that I have, so they could not find anything related to a virus or malware and they finally suggested me to contact Microsoft Tech Support since IE belongs to them.

I would very much appreciate that If you have found the reason of this IE problem, or the culprit or the solution or fix, please share it with me.

 

Hi, that's the first thing I tried and did not solve the problem. I even used Acronis True Image to fully restore system to April 11, 2010 (I am positive I did not have this issue before May 1st), again reset IE uninstalled all toolbars except Google Toolbar and I have noticed something that may or may not be correct:
When I open IE directly and browse with it I don't see any problems (at least until now) but when I browse with AOL (which uses their own configured IE) and I am being taken to and IE webpage thru AOL, when I close that page something triggers IE to start refreshing that same webpage again and again repeatedly and my computer ceases to work (like it freezes) and I have to reboot.

I have scanned with everything (superantispyware, Spybot. Malwarebytes , Tren Micro, Norton, antirootkit, antitroyans, HijackThis, etc) in normal and safe mode and nothing was found except harmless tracking cookies. Called Norton support and they only asked me to run their scanners (which I did to no avail). There are other people (even in this forum and other forums) with the same problem and nobody knows WHY IE is acting crazy, some of them have the same issue with firefox and others with IE8 (but I only have this problem with IE7 and i have not upgraded to IE8 because I have heard it is not very stable). Could be some new virus not yet detected by any antivirus, could be some bad windows security update for IE or a bug in AOL (some people have also complained about AOL taking you to IE webpage and when you close the page IE opens by itself and starts opening the same page multiple times. I have never seen this.

I can only say that, in my particular case, the problem happens mostly with IE webpages opened thru AOL, I may have encounter same problem once browsing directly with IE but almost 99% of the time it is browsing thru AOL.
I called AOL support to know if they have some bug or if other AOL customers have complained to them about this issue but, since I use AOL for free they say they can not offer me free support and that I would have to pay for the support but I doubt very much that they can fix the problem.