The Case of the Random IE Crash

[Capt.Jack Sparrow]

While I long for the day when I no longer experience the effects of buggy software, there’s something rewarding about solving my own troubleshooting cases. In the process, I often come up with new techniques to add to my bag of tricks and to share with you in my “Case of the Unexplained…” presentations and blog posts. The other day I successfully closed an especially interesting case that opened when Internet Explorer (IE) crashed as I was reading a web page:






Whenever I experience a crash, whether it’s the system or an application, I always take a look at it. There’s no guarantee, but many times after spending just a few minutes I find clues that point at an add-on as the cause and ultimately a fix or workaround. In most cases when it’s an application crash, the faulty process is obvious and I simply launch Windbg (from the free Debugging Tools for Windows package that comes with the Windows SDK and Windows DDK), attach it to the process, and start investigating.



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[edilee012]

I keep getting this ALOT lately and it restores the browsing tabs. I believe it is Flash related since everytime it happens to me Flash related content is present on the page I am viewing, as a matter of fact 100% of the time Flash content is present.

 

[roncerr]

... I believe it is Flash related since everytime it happens to me Flash related content is present on the page I am viewing, as a matter of fact 100% of the time Flash content is present.

Procedure for updating flash:http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/97970-win7-browsers-freeze.html#post846707

 

[JonM33]

Yep, this is why I don't use IE8 at all.