IE Always Reloads Entire Page when <a href="#" /> is Clicked

Question

I'm having a weird error with Internet Explorer (Currently version 8, but had the same issue with 7). When clicking a link such as:

<a href="#">Hello</a> 

the page is completely reloaded no matter what.

However a link such as this:

<a>Hello</a>

will work correctly and not reload the entire page.

Is there some sort of setting in IE that can cause this functionality to change?

Info: I have already set security settings to low, and have disabled all addons plus the 'Enable third party addons' option.

Any suggestions are helpful, thanks.

EDIT: Here is what I'm testing

<a href="#" id="btnAddStuff" runat="server" onclick="displayAddStuff();" style="cursor:pointer;">
                <asp:Literal ID="litAddStuff" runat="server" Text="Add Stuff"  /></a>

EDIT #2: I have tested this with multiple versions of IE. With a clean install it works correctly. However testing on a random user's machine with different settings causes the issue.

EDIT #3: Thanks for the replies on how to make this code better. While I appreciate that, my question is if anyone knows if there are configurable settings in Internet Explorer that can cause the browser to run the above code differently?

Answer 1

If you know a little javasript and or jQuery, you could do this:

$("a[rel='prevDefault']").on('click', function(event){
    if($(this).attr("href").indexOf("#") > -1){
        event.preventDefault();
    }
});

or:

var anchorArray = document.getElementsByTagName("a"), I;
for(I=0;I<anchorArray.length;I++){
   anchorArray[I].click =  function(event){
      if(anchorArray[I].href.indexOf("#") > -1){
          event.preventDefault();
      }
   }
}