Two windows tabs when opening mail database

We have an user who gets two windows tabs when he opens his mail database. The first tab has the right title but shows the underlying views and folders (no frameset). The second tab has no title and shows the frameset but no documents in the view. We suspect the $showhidepreviewpane parameter in the notes.ini file to cause the problem. In a previous case it helped to disable the document preview via the menu line - exit notes in order to update the notes.ini file - and then restart the client. Any clues to what can be done?