Eradicate Browser Crashes. 

Reprinted from April 2001 , pg 90 by Steve Bass 


Your going to laugh, but sometimes even my browser crashes.
It's an Internet fact of life. Poorly written JAVA applications are 
often the culprits, as are imperfectly designed Web pages,
 ( and maybe errant sunspots). You can either stop browsing
 altogether, or step through these tips: 

1. Cache in the History.    Corrupt files in both Internet Explorer
 and Netscape can lead to errors and subsequent crashes.
 Deleting the Cache, and History files may help. In Internet
 Explorer 5 select, Tools * Internet Options, and in the Temporary
 Internet Files area check Delete Files . ( In older versions of 
Internet Explorer, go to the View Menu to find Internet Options. )
Next, click Clear History . Myself, I keep the history trimmed 
down to ten days, helping to reduce the chance of corrupt files.
 It's just as easy in Netscape: Simply go to Edit * Perference, 
click Navigator (History in Navigator 6 ) in the three on the left, 
and then select Clear History when it appears on the right.
Double click Advanced , select Cache , and click Clear Disk Cache. 

2.   Inactive ActiveX.   I still get anxious when I see the
 "invalid Page Fault in Kernel32.DLL" errors. For a while, whenever
 I exited Internet Explorer the message would gleefully pop up. A 
corrupt ActiveX control was causing the error. In Internet Explorer 
select, Tools * Internet Options and click the Settings and 
View Objects buttons. Once there, choose View * Details. 
If you see ActiveX items that are listed as "damaged", right - click
 each one and remove it. No damaged items? Update each by 
right - clicking it and selecting Update (you will be prompted to 
go online,). 
Netscape users should first close the browser and use 
Windows Explorer to head for the 
C:\Program Files\Netscape\Navigator\Program folder. 
Rename the Plugins folder "Plug_safe" (highlight the file and 
press F2) , and then Reload Netscape. If you experence no more 
crashes, copy one file at a time from the Plug_Safe folder into the 
new Plugins folder Netscape created when you reloaded it. After 
you add each new file, restart Netscape and watch for crashes, 
so you can spot - and remove - the culprit. 

3.  Update Vitriolic Video Drivers.   If you're still getting Page Fault 
Errors, and General Protection Faults, there's a chance your video 
drivers are corrupt or out of date. Get fresh video drivers from Frank 
Condron's Web site www.worldowindows.com it has driver details
 with links to vendors. 

4.  Check the Desktop for DLLs.   It's a long shot, but stranger things 
have happened: Make sure you haven't inadvertently dragged and 
dropped any DLLs on your desktop. Check by right clicking on each 
icon and selecting Properties , and examining the "Target" field for 
the .dll extention. 



This was from an article by Steve Bass for PC-World , April 2001 issue. 
(typos by me)