IE 8 & 9 crash when opening a new tab

Kari · 12 Dec 2010

Done all of that. No luck.

EDIT: My upload bandwidth is reserved at the moment because of a large upload job. In about an hour when it's done, I'll add an explaining video here.

EDIT 2: OK, video uploaded. Short explanation: as you can see, simply nothing works after clicking the new tab button.

Bill2 · 13 Dec 2010

I wonder if dump files can be created?

Try creating this key:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\iexplore.exe

In the iexplore.exe key, create a REG_EXPAND_SZ value named DumpFolder and set the data for the value to %systemdrive%\iedumps . You need to make sure the %systemdrive%\iedumps folder actually exists. Hopefully, there may be a dump file in %systemdrive%\iedumps.

Also, wonder whether this may be related to win7 sp1 beta? I think you mentioned somewhere, you're using the beta.

Kari · 13 Dec 2010

No, I've not installed SP.

Created the key as you suggested. It was 30 minutes ago and tested IE. It crashed, as before but this time computer went crazy, HD has been constantly spinning since that, desktop is completely frozen, can do nothing. Posting from another computer, at this moment it's about 35 minutes already,

Kari

Bill2 · 13 Dec 2010

Sorry to hear that. Looks like it may be part of a bigger problem. Unless its creating a large dump file.

Kari · 13 Dec 2010

But it's just IE. Everything else works fine, this is one good laptop if I may say so (about the same than in my system specs, only i5 processor). I am not willing to reinstall because of this, nor can I restore an image because (of course just now!) my last image is almost three weeks old and there's been major installing and updating since that. That's so typical! Normally I create an image every weekend.

The lockup I mentioned in my last post took finally about 40 minutes, then HD stopped spinning, but desktop stayed frozen. No dump was created, Event Viewer has nothing. Hard reset and I'm back.

Normally I'm using Lunascape browser with Trident engine (you can choose in Lunascape between Trident, WebKit and Gecko, global or for every tab different), so I'm good. I just wonder what can cause this. I can use IE, both 8 & 9, completely normally as long as I don't press new tab button. I can open new tab by right clicking a link, and switch between tabs. Everything works 100% as long as I do not click new tab button :)

New ideas welcome...

Kari

**cluberti** · 13 Dec 2010

You can always install the debugging tools for windows (32bit, as IE on x64 is still 32bit), then run adplus against a running IE instance to dump it when it crashes - make sure the TabProcGrowth value I mentioned earlier in this thread is still set to 0 in the registry for this test:

Create the directory C:\adplus
Open IE
Open an elevated cmd prompt
Change directory to where the 32bit debugging tools are installed - usually "C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows" (substitute "Program Files (x86)" for x64 versions of Windows, of course)
Execute the following command: "cscript adplus.vbs -crash -pn iexplore.exe -quiet -o C:\adplus)"
Cause IE to crash - this should cause at least one (maybe more) .dmp files to be created in a subfolder of C:\adplus

If you get 2nd chance .dmp files (they'll say 2nd chance in their name) after IE crashes and closes, those are what we'd want to see (note the command in step 5 will generate a symbol path warning - this can be ignored).