Internet Explorer 7 & 8

Thursday was a crash free day but it crashed once on Friday so I ran some memory checks (for about 4 hours). Nothing showed up so hopefully, my memory is okay.

Today is Saturday and it's not even 07:30 yet (local time) but already IE has crashed twice. I looked in my event logs. The last crash was at roughly 07:10. At 07:09:40 I see 3 entries in my Applications log. All are from source ESENT and look like this:-

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wuaueng.dll (3264) SUS20ClientDataStore: The database engine has successfully completed recovery steps.

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Also, about 20 seconds earlier I see this error (Source = NMIndexingService)

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The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( NMIndexingService ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Service started.

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Everything else appears normal. My System log only contains errors relating to my parallel port (no devices attached). Everything else is okay.

I guess the only other thing I can do is try running in safe mode for a while.

[Edit...] Recently a button was added to CodeGuru so that when posting, you could easily recover your last post. This was very handy if CG crashed while posting or previewing a post. Anyone know what happened to that button? It seems to have gone. :(

Try visiting this web site. There's an opening animated graphic that settles down after 10 seconds or so, leaving a 'Menu' option at the bottom of the graphic. Clicking on the menu brings up a signpost with the item 'People and Contacts'. Clicking that item brings up an animated merry-go-round. Hovering over it with my mouse will change the speed and direction of the merry-go-round. With add-ons enabled that page is guaranteed to lock up my system within about 20 seconds. Does this give any clue to what the problem might be?

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wuaueng.dll

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indicates a problem with the Windows Update Service. Have you gone to Windows Updates since installing SP3? If so, there is FREE Support for any problem around SP3 (until June, 09)

Make sure you do ALL Windows Upates thru IE. There are surely some that you missed, including the new Windows Updet Service INstaller. There's one AFTER you installed SP3

John, what was the outcome when you started IE without any plugins?

Arjay - I ran it all day yesterday without plugins and it worked fine - right until the very end of the day when it locked up :cry:

David, I carried out an automatic update a few hours ago (actually, I had to do it twice because the first one went badly wrong). However, it's no longer crashing on that page that I mentioned a few posts back. So the initial signs are good and I'm hoping it'll last. My only worry is that I now have half a gigabyte more space on the drive than I had before I updated :confused: so an awful lot of stuff seems to have gotten deleted along the way. :(

NOT an Automatic Update. Use IE -> Tools -> Windows Update -> CUSTOM (not Express)

All of the Recommended Updates.

Click on Hardware Updates and add them all

Click on Optional Updates. WMP 11 is the main one.

Do this until there are no more updates other than optional software

It might take a few reboot cycles between them to get them all.

I hope this won't be "famous last words" but running Automatic Updates seems to have fixed the problem. Also, the big increase in my disk space turned out to be because all my old restore points had been cleared. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed but things are looking good, so far. :thumb:

You know I rarely ever run into issues with IE. Perhaps it's because I don't install unknown plugins and always have Windows auto-update running.

Yes, that's the same with me. I'm a great believer in the theory that if something ain't broke, there's no need to keep fixing it..!

Then, consider it ALWAYS BROKEN!

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always have Windows auto-update running.

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Words to live by...

I always have auto-update running to keep my windows vulnerabilities to the lowest. If your windows is not fully updated, some old exploits might work against you and steal your credit card numbers or passwords.

Sadly I eventually had to dump Internet Explorer. After running Automatic Updates I had a few days of trouble free operation but then the problems resurfaced. A couple of weeks ago I installed Safari and (touch wood) it's been stable, so far. Not entirely sure if I like it but it doesn't crash and that's a BIG plus!!

I'd bet that you are infected with viruses/spware, known as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program).

It could easily be detected and removed by most AV programs, except that nobody classifies a PUP as malware. It doesn't spread by itself, or infect other machines. 'User clicks OK' so we can't BLOCK IT!!!

The slowest thing about IE for me has been creation of new tabs. And in fact startup time is a bit too much too. I have been using Google Chrome, which is considerably low weight than IE, and probably so has a faster start-up time. Firefox had been faster in start-up time and creation of new tabs but I removed it in the past for no reason as such and haven't wanted to install it again. Don't want to have too many browsers installed. :)

The same trouble I see with Outlook 2007 as well. When opening the first email after start-up, it takes quite a few seconds. Then on it becomes ok. I don't know if that's a problem to be reported but I have continued to live with it.

Safari is okay from what I've seen but very typically Apple - i.e. an average performer, yet somewhat over-hyped.

I've only found one way to crash it so far and that's to press the 'back' button after submitting a form. With IE I could submit a form and then press the 'back' button twice in rapid succession. This would take me back to the page before the page that had the form on it. With Safari this just seems to hang the browser (but at least that's better than crashing the whole PC !!)