Firefox problem with Vista.

[bizzybody]

I just got an Acer Aspire 5315 for $348 on sale at Wal-Mart. Has Vista Home Basic* on it. (Bleargh.)

I was downloading updates from the Acer site with Firefox 2.0.0.9 and to speed things up I decided I'd download some with IE.

When IE launched it minimized the Firefox Download window. Clicking the taskbar button for it just made it blink, so I rightclicked and hit Maximize.

Now all I can get on the Download window is maximized or the taskbar button. If I hit restore when it's maximized, it minimizes and the only thing I can do is rightclick and hit maximize, clicking restore when it's minimized just makes it blink.

What did IE screw up? How did IE do this? How do I stop it from doing it again after I get it fixed?

*First thing I did was change all the desktop settings to Classic style.

[cluberti]

First off, IE is not able to directly edit a process space other than it's own, so you're talking about sending a WM_ message to explorer to do this, which I can honestly say I've never seen a base IE install do this. It's more likely you had an add-on in IE that sent the message, if in fact it even came from IE at all (explorer would be able to do this, so an add-on running in explorer.exe is much more likely).

If you disable all non-Microsoft boot/startup items via Autoruns and disable all non-Microsoft shell extensions in explorer via ShellExView and reboot, does the problem continue? Also, does it happen in Safe Mode w/Networking?

[bizzybody]

Somehow fixed itself. I ran Firefox, downloaded the Yahoo logo image off Yahoo.com. Went to the download window, which was maximized, and clicked the restore button. It minimized.

Then when I clicked the taskbar button, the download window opened up to the upper left corner and made as small as it can be. I stretched it back out and it's OK now.

There's no addons at all to IE. It's a brand new laptop that mostly all I've done to is remove factory installed bloatware and installed Firefox, Spybot and AVG.