Internet Explorer 11 dying when access Favorites (star) button on Windows 7

Question

Internet Explorer 11 (64 bit on Windows 7) has been giving me problems for a while, dying when I push the Favorites button. Unfortunately, one time it didn't die, and the next time I ran it, IE remembered that my Favorites (star) button was pushed to show the favorites/history pane and this time, IE dies on start up, so now I cannot even bring up IE.

Here's the error from the EVENT LOG:

Faulting application name: IEXPLORE.EXE, version: 11.0.9600.17280, time stamp: 0x53f262eb
Faulting module name: WININET.dll, version: 11.0.9600.17280, time stamp: 0x53f26cca
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000046f7
Faulting process id: 0x1e6c
Faulting application start time: 0x01cfd200e2bb556c
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\WININET.dll
Report Id: 50951b45-3e00-11e4-a616-001fbc091bfa

Both the 32 and 64 bit versions die.

Any idea?

Update:

The last time it died, the favorites button was pushed. Now, every time I start IE it dies because it is retaining the state of the app. A partial help would be to help me identify tghe registry setting that controls the state.

Update 2

Since the program was dying originally whoever I clicked the Favorites button to open the Favorites\History panel, I was thinking "Maybe I should delete all of my favorites, moving them to my desktop for now, theorizing that perhaps there is some fav shortcut that is corrupt in some way.

When I did so, I dialog box appeared indicating that the files were being "Smart Moved." I did a quick Google and found that this may be related to using a Windows Explorer Add on to create a file/folder(?) junction. I do recall using it to relocate large folders, eg, Itunes from my small C:\ SDD to a larger drive, but I did not intentionally touch the Favorites folder. However, I might have indirectly done the same thing when I used Windows built in functionality to move some of my standard folders of my C drive. I thought I was copying only the small Favorites folder to my desktop, but when I saw I was also moving my whole "Download" folder, I cancelled it and hit Control + Z to undo the move.

Answer 1

Since the program was dying originally whoever I clicked the Favorites button to open the Favorites\History panel, I was thinking "Maybe I should delete all of my favorites, moving them to my desktop for now, theorizing that perhaps there is some fav shortcut that is corrupt in some way.

When I did so, I dialog box appeared indicating that the files were being "Smart Moved." I did a quick Google and found that this may be related to using a Windows Explorer Add on to create a file/folder(?) junction. I do recall using it to relocate large folders, eg, Itunes from my small C:\ SDD to a larger drive, but I did not intentionally touch the Favorites folder. However, I might have indirectly done the same thing when I used Windows built in functionality to move some of my standard folders of my C drive. I thought I was copying only the small Favorites folder to my desktop, but when I saw I was also moving my whole "Download" folder, I cancelled it and hit Control + Z to undo the move and was pleansantly surprised that this "move" and subsequent "undo" apparently had some positive effect.

Problem solved, by accident.

Answer 2

Had similar crashes on win 10 - ie11. VERY annoying. It appears that when you copy favourites from one machine to another it takes the security settings with from the other machine. But those "users" "Account unknown" cannot be resolved and crashes IE11 favorites.

Just goto your user profile "c:\user\your profile" and find the "favorites directory". Right click on it, select properties, select security/advanced and find the "account unknown(....)" , delete them and "apply".

If you do not have access get your admin to do it.

Worked for me after months of irritation