IE9 Freezing/Closing when a URL is entered

I have never liked Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, the company I work for develop web applications with IE being the target browser. So when IE screws up, I can’t do my job properly.
And guess what! IE screwed up. If I opened IE and entered a URL, it would either completely freeze, or close its own window, depending on how strong the wind was blowing. After significant faffing however, I found the solution. For the record, I’m running Windows 7 Professional x64.

– Edit: A lot of this might be redundant… try doing step 5 by itself, and then do the whole script if that doesn’t work.

1. Remove the IE9 updates. Go to Control Panel -> Programs and Features and select View installed updates on the left there. Under the Microsoft Windows heading you should find an entry for Windows Internet Explorer 9. Select it and then go to Uninstall.
2. If you’re paranoid like me, now’s the time to do a reboot!
3. Remove IE entirely. Go back to Control Panel -> Programs and Features and select the Turn Windows features on or off option this time. From the pop-up dialog, untick the option for Internet Explorer 8 and click OK.
4. Restart again! Hey!
5. Grab the free version of CCleaner from here. Run it, go to the Registry tab, click Scan for Issues. Once the scan has finished, select Fix selected issues… (take a backup of the registry just in case). When that’s done, go to the Cleaner tab and click Run Cleaner.
6. Restart! Yeah, I know.
7. Enable Internet Explorer again, basically the reverse of step 3 – tick it this time!
8. Guess what this step involves…
9. Run Windows Update, install IE9 and its updates.
10. Restart.
11. While there are updates to install, go to 9.

This worked for me, hopefully it’ll help someone else out too. And IE is still a piece of crap.