Open Internet Explorer 9 in a new session

Question

I'd like to create a shortcut to Internet Explorer 9 that opens a new window in a new session. It could be a direct shortcut to IE, or a shortcut to a script (VBScript or Javascript) that does the job.

I know I can click File + New session, but I'm looking for a "Quick Launch" or "Desktop" or "Start Menu" shortcut.

If I open let's say 3 IE windows, and then from Taskmgr.exe, I locate one of the IE windows and perform "End Process", all 3 IE windows will close.

If I open the 3 IE windows using "New Session", and then use Taskmgr.exe to "End Process" on one of the IE windows, the other 2 IE windows remain open.

For earlier versions of IE, there used to be a command line option "-new" to open a new IE window in a new session. I've tried this with IE9 but it doesn't seem to work. It opens a new IE window, but it seems the new window is in the same session as the other IE windows.

Answer 1

"I'd like to create a shortcut to Internet Explorer 9 that opens a new window in a new session."

Reference IE Command-Line Options:

Using -new is no longer possible:

-new Obsolete as of Internet Explorer 7.

However, there is a new command line option -noframemerging which will do what you want:

-noframemerging Internet Explorer 8 and later versions. Prevents Internet Explorer from opportunistically merging new frame processes into existing frame processes.

Reference IE8 and Reliability:

Frame Process Merging

To help improve startup performance, we have reduced the number of processes that we start. Instead of firing up two processes every time you launch the browser (one for the frame and one for your tabs), we now only fire up one frame process the first time you launch IE. Subsequent launches will only start a new tab process or make a new tab in an existing tab process.

For users that are accustomed to browsing websites in multiple “sessions”, for example if you want to log in to multiple email sites simultaneously, you can specify the -nomerge command line option to disable this feature.

The above link was referring to IE 8 Beta 2. In the final release -nomerge was renamed to -noframemerging.

Conclusion:

Replace -new with -noframemerging in your shortcut command.