I've been using Windows 7 since Build 6801 and never had any problems like that with IE8... however on Dec 12 there were several reports surfacing regarding a rather large security hole that is affecting all versions of IE... that could have something to do with it...I'm not 100% sure if a fix is available yet but if not I'm sure there will be soon enough.. in the meantime it looks like we're back to the same old story with IE....
also, my windows update isn't working...getting error 80070422
Running from program files didn't work.
I'm gonna just reinstall with a clean version of Win7 after the newest test version is released in a week...i can put up with it for now.
I also was playing around with vlite and probably uninstalled something required for winupdate and ie8
I don't think they'd have a build to show off at shows that has a persistent IE bug