IE random crashes (no error msg)

[Phil Banks]

My friends pc has the following problems...

IE6 (latest patches) spontaneously closes when i try and view certain
sites. Every time the same. Type a known address (for example
www.dabs.com, nothing dodgy there) and it closes all iterations of IE
down, now warning, no error messages.

I tried installing, Firefox 1.04, Netscape 8.1 and Opera. Firefox and
Netscape spawn the process (in task manager), but it is killed before it
can actually initialise the program. No sites are viewable. Opera gets
as far as loading and trying to load a page, and then is closed. It even
gives an error message and lets windows send an error message, not
helpful tho.

Anyone got any ideas? Ive run scr\ scannow to check windows componants
state, adaware and spybot to look for evil programs. And virus scans.
Norton Suite is also running. So the PC seems sown tight as far as
external progs seems. Looks to me like a corrup[tion somewhere/ virus
that did damage before being removed. But what throws me is how it
effects ALL browsers...

Any suggestions welcome. Thanks for your time,phil.

ps - its win xp home sp2, on a p4 1.7, 256mb dell.

 

[PA Bear]

Check for Hijackware
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm
http://aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/Darnit.htm
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k/Malware_Defence.htm
http://defendingyourmachine.blogspot.com/

 

[Jon Kennedy]

This may be caused by spyware/malware that's gotten installed on
your system. Use Ad-Aware and/or Spybot Search & Destroy to remove it.

Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Good sites on how to install and use Spybot -
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/tutorial/index.html
http://tomcoyote.com/SPYBOT/index1.php

Also download a winsock repair tool, to have just in case cleaning up
anything found breaks it, or is causing your current issue -

Winsock repair tools:
LSPFix- all versions of Windows http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.zip
Winsock2 Fix- Win98, ME
http://www.bu.edu/pcsc/internetaccess/winsock2fix.html
LavaSoft- all versions of Windows-
http://digital-solutions.co.uk/lavasoft/whndnfix.zip

More information here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/Darnit.html
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/ - runs a little script when loading page to
check for common parasites

If no joy, in IE go to Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Browsing
section, uncheck "Enable third-party browser extensions", click Apply, click
Okay, reboot. If that solves your problem, then more troubleshooting is
needed to find out exactly which program, or Browser Helper Object (BHO) is
causing this problem. You don't want to leave it at that, as some BHOs are
useful or necessary - like Adobe Acrobat for reading .pdf files or an
essential component of Norton AV. Get BHODemon -
http://www.definitivesolutions.com/bhodemon.htm - read all about BHOs.
Disable all items, and then gradually replace one or two at a time to narrow
down the culprit.

Or if you have IE 6 SP-2 you can do this within the browser:
How to manage Internet Explorer add-ons in Windows XP Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883256

If all the above fails, then the problem could be something new that the
spyware cleaners above don't have in their databases yet. In that case....
HijackThis direct download:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip
Tutorial on how to use HijackThis:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/htlogtutorial.html
Then post it's output log to the forum here for analysis and feedback by the
parasite experts:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/forums/
Or the other HijackThis Logs forums listed here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/forums.html

Or try this program to get some of the most nasty malware:
CWShredder direct download:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cwshredder.zip

An alternate resource for all of this and more:
http://www.aumha.org/secure.htm


--

Jon R. Kennedy
Charlotte, NC, USA
(e-mail address removed)

My friends pc has the following problems...

IE6 (latest patches) spontaneously closes when i try and view certain
sites. Every time the same. Type a known address (for example
www.dabs.com, nothing dodgy there) and it closes all iterations of IE
down, now warning, no error messages.

I tried installing, Firefox 1.04, Netscape 8.1 and Opera. Firefox and
Netscape spawn the process (in task manager), but it is killed before it
can actually initialise the program. No sites are viewable. Opera gets as
far as loading and trying to load a page, and then is closed. It even
gives an error message and lets windows send an error message, not helpful
tho.

Anyone got any ideas? Ive run scr\ scannow to check windows componants
state, adaware and spybot to look for evil programs. And virus scans.
Norton Suite is also running. So the PC seems sown tight as far as
external progs seems. Looks to me like a corrup[tion somewhere/ virus that
did damage before being removed. But what throws me is how it effects ALL
browsers...

Any suggestions welcome. Thanks for your time,phil.

ps - its win xp home sp2, on a p4 1.7, 256mb dell.

 

[Guest]

after you do all the spyware and virus scanning , you can use filemon and
regmon from www.sysinternals.com to find out exactly what file or regkey is
causing the problem

michael evanchik

www.michaelevanchik.com

 

[Phil Banks]

Thanks for that. looks to be some helpful stuff there. ill try them
out.thanks for your time.phil

after you do all the spyware and virus scanning , you can use filemon and
regmon from www.sysinternals.com to find out exactly what file or regkey is
causing the problem

michael evanchik

www.michaelevanchik.com

:

My friends pc has the following problems...

IE6 (latest patches) spontaneously closes when i try and view certain
sites. Every time the same. Type a known address (for example
www.dabs.com, nothing dodgy there) and it closes all iterations of IE
down, now warning, no error messages.

I tried installing, Firefox 1.04, Netscape 8.1 and Opera. Firefox and
Netscape spawn the process (in task manager), but it is killed before it
can actually initialise the program. No sites are viewable. Opera gets
as far as loading and trying to load a page, and then is closed. It even
gives an error message and lets windows send an error message, not
helpful tho.

Anyone got any ideas? Ive run scr\ scannow to check windows componants
state, adaware and spybot to look for evil programs. And virus scans.
Norton Suite is also running. So the PC seems sown tight as far as
external progs seems. Looks to me like a corrup[tion somewhere/ virus
that did damage before being removed. But what throws me is how it
effects ALL browsers...

Any suggestions welcome. Thanks for your time,phil.

ps - its win xp home sp2, on a p4 1.7, 256mb dell.

 

[Candy]

I checked out www.sysinternals.com, and it looks way too involved for me to
tackle right now. My ADHD has reached its stopping point after reading and
trying to digest Shanen's LONG but helpful post. Can anyone give short,
concise directions on how to download and use the filemon and regmon
mentioned in the post below. Thanks.

Candy