A memory leak occurs in Internet Explorer 8 when you open and then close a new window or tab that contains circular references that involve the window object

Consider the following scenario:

• You use Windows Internet Explorer 8 to browse a webpage.
• You open and then close a newly created window or tab that contains circular references.
• The�circular references involve the window object through any of its event handlers, such as the following:
  • window.onload
  • window.onerror
  • window.onunload

In this scenario, a memory leak may occur. Specifically, after you perform the same operation several times, you find that the memory that is used by Internet Explorer keeps increasing.

Note This problem does not occur when you use Internet Explorer 9.

To resolve this problem, install this update that is described in the following section.

Security update information

To resolve this issue, install the most recent cumulative security update for Internet Explorer. To do this, go to the following Microsoft website:For more technical information about the most recent cumulative security update for Internet Explorer, go to the following Microsoft website:Note This update was first included in security update 2675157.

For more information about the security update, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

To work around this problem, add cleanup code to the page that is opened in a new window or tab.� The cleanup code should remove handlers for window events as the page is closed.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

For more information about software update terminology, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: