in ie 8 with the proposed changes this happens to the mshta process and installers still lockup. I think its going to be best just to leave it as is right now. I verified that the issues that were being reproduced (Office install lockups and multi-stage installers lockups, I had reproduced both) do not exist with the 8.7.2 refresh on the following real life setups: XP\SP3 ie6, ie7, ie8 Win7 both architectures ie8, ie9, ie10, ie11 I agree that the code could be cleaner but, quite simply this works...