title: How can I stop my Visual Studio from launching IE8 TWICE when I click "Start Without Debugging" (Ctrl-F5)?
body: <p>I use Visual Studio 2008 primarily for web development, and there's one annoying behaviour which seems to have occurred ever since I upgraded to IE8 on my work PC:</p>
  
  <p>When I set a start page for a web site or web application project, and then either click the "Start Without Debugging" icon in the toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-F5, Visual Studio proceeds to start IE8 (my default web browser), but does so <b>twice</b>:</p>
  
  <p>The first new window that IE8 opens has a tab saying "Connecting...", and it loads the about:blank page.  Then, another new IE8 window opens also with a tab saying "Connecting...", and loads the start page I set in my project.</p>
  
  <p>This is <strong>very</strong> annoying.  Does anybody have any ideas what might be causing this and how to fix it?</p>
  
  <p>Before somebody suggests it, I have <i>already</i> been working around this for a while by having Firefox as my default browser ;-)  But, I'd like to use Visual Studio's javascript debugging capabilities with IE8 and so want IE8 as my default again, for now.</p>
  
  <p><hr />
  <strong>Additional information:</strong></p>
  
  <p>Using Process Explorer, I can see that both of the <strong>iexplore.exe</strong> processes were launched by the same parent process, Visual Studio 2008's <strong>devenv.exe</strong>.</p>
  
  <p>The first iexplore.exe process has the following command line:</p>
  
  <p><pre>"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -noframemerging -debug about:blank</pre></p>
  
  <p>The second iexplore.exe process, launched a few seconds later, has the following command line:</p>
  
  <p><pre>"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -noframemerging -suspended -debug <a href="http://localhost/test/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://localhost/test/index.html</a></pre></p>
  
  <p>Then, I also tried Process Monitor.  In the log, I can see <strong>two</strong> distinct "Process Create" events from devenv.exe on "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" ... a few seconds apart.</p>
  
  <p>Interestingly, if I try the exact same thing (launch without debugging) with Visual Studio 2005 (instead of 2008), I only see a single process
  created with a command line of:</p>
  
  <p><pre>"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" about:blank</pre></p>
  
  <p>With 2005, visually it appears as if about:blank gets loaded first, and then the URL gets loaded by that same browser process in the same tab as about:blank, overwriting it.</p>
  
  <p>One other thing I notice different:  In the VS2005 Process Monitor log, it shows a lot of reading of the file "C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieframe.dll", but the same doesn't show in the VS2008 Process Monitor log.  (ieframe.dll contains the type library for some COM objects related to Internet Explorer.)  So, the way VS2005 launches and controls IE could be different than what VS2008 does.</p>
  
  <p><strong>AND LAST</strong>, this is weird:  In VS2008, if I click "Start Without Debugging", I get the two windows.  But, if in Solution Explorer I instead <em>right-click</em> my web site project or any HTML file in it and choose "View in Browser", I get only the single window.  Why the difference between "Start Without Debugging" and "View in Browser"?</p>