Has my Internet Explorer been compromised?

Use Firefox instead of IE.

What browser are you using to read this?

Have you tried rebooting your computer?

I don't know what is going on, but I've had it happen too. It has never failed to restart, so I don't worry about it.

My main browser is Firefox, but "Use Firefox" is a marketing slogan, not an answer to all browser woes. Firefox is prone to crashing as well and no browser is immune to this.

In this case roger has it right, it just crashed (as all browsers will do sometimes) and unless it keeps happening there's likely nothing to worry about.

Sure it's a marketing slogan. I suspect many folks who use IE are unaware of the alternatives.

There is a very nice free add on to IE7/IE8 by the name of IEPRO.

I had found it have many features that is nice to have and the price of free is right!

Second comment running any internet browser under the program name sandboxie will add a lot of protection with little overhead.

A microsoft program by the name of dropmyrights is also useful if you are running XP.

Google either for details.

Mine's done it too. I got a box to click for more details the second time it did it, and as I remember it had something to do with an Adobe upgrade that seems to cause glitches. Good work, Adobe, thanks a bunch.

Unrelated, but sometimes I try to load IE and get a message telling me the page I requested is not available because I'm offline. Click yes to go to Explorer. Is that dumb, or not?

Common when you are dealing with wifi even after IE is running and I hit the refresh button if that happen.

But the question wasn't about whether there are alternatives and the alternative you are recommending just isn't significantly better in this regard (Chrome is far better than Firefox for this, which leaks memory like a sieve).

I really hate IE, it adds about 10% more work for most of my web development and by all means I'd love for people to stop using it. But if I went to a mechanic to ask about a problem with a Hyundai I wouldn't want his only answer to be that Honda is better and I shouldn't use a Hyundai. It may even be right and even be useful information in some contexts but it doesn't fix the problem, and if the user was asking about Firefox crashing you'd not be telling them to switch to IE.

Essentially the "use a Mac" and "use Firefox" is just "use what I use" in lieu of a real answer and it's a pet peeve of mine to see so many simple questions being answered with someone's browser preference instead. Answers should be cross-browser too.

[/rant]

I love the fact that IE8 is not completely comparable with IE7 and they had a feature where you can tell IE8 to act like IE7 as a result!

While I understand your point here, I'm not pretending to be a mechanic, as in your example. I'm just playing the dork who looks at you driving the broken Hyundai and tells you to buy a Toyota -- I'm not trying to tell you the problem with your Hyundai is it isn't a Toyota, I'm trying to tell you you might want to consider an upgrade of your equipment, for whatever it's worth. I'd certainly hope the mechanics would have better advice.