Microsoft tech support claims to know nothing about this, however on Windows 2003 and XP systems which are still running Internet Explorer 6.x, some combination of service packs and hotfixes causes the browser home page to randomly open to the Microsoft GetItNow download page for Internet Explorer 7. Apparently the Microsoft obsession of forcing IE 7 onto every system has caused them to stoop low enough to try to trick users, especially those using Windows 2003 on corporate servers, into installing it. It is random, and does not occur on all systems, so it might be that this is the idea of some wayward programmer at Microsoft, rather than a corporate plan. It is a nuisance to individuals, but can be a serious issue if IE 7 is installed on a business server that may have custom software that is not compatible with it. The change is done on a per-user-profile basis, so it is not easy to disable this globally. Blocking access to Microsoft.com would do it, however, that is not practical, since Windows Update would no longer work, etc. However, the GetItNow site is reached using a redirect to go.microsoft.com, and this can be blocked easily – just add “127.0.0.1 go.microsoft.com” to the C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file. This only other effect seems to be to disable the rarely useable links in Event Log messages, since they also use go.microsoft.com. The change is easily undone if required.