Strange "New Tab" page corruption

"There are two registry locations, one for 64-bit and the other for 32-bit.

64-bit is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs

32-bit is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs

I believe that both are supposed to contain an entry named Tabs that contains the value
res://ieframe.dll/tabswelcome.htm; check that the 32-bit entry is correct.

Also, in IE8 (32-bit) make sure that under Tabs settings and under the category ""When a new tab is opened, open:"" you have it set for ""The new tab page""."