Weird Internet Explorer Error

Factual Questions
1

When I try to close multiple windows in IE, either by clicking on the X at the top, or by clicking on an address in my Yahoo address book, for instance, IE completely closes all windows and the following error message pops up: “The Instruction at “0x7d508ffa” referenced memory at “0x0000004c.” The memory could not be “read.” Click OK to terminate program.”

When you click OK, all IE windows close, and you have to restart the program. Does anyone have any idea how the heck to solve this annoying problem.

2

Try emptying your internet temporary files. From a browser window, select Tools, then Internet Options, then under Internet Temporary Files, click Delete Files.

3

I deleted the files, but it’s still doing the same thing. Any other suggestions?

4

The error you’re getting could indicate some kind of corruption in the system which might be cleared by reboot. The IE program is trying to read from a memory address that it’s not allowed to access. This could be caused by a number of things, like a bug in Windows. If you just restart the program, Windows might be reloading a cached version of the program that still has the corruption insetad of loading the program from scratch (I’m not familiar with Windows internals so I’m not sure whether it does this but I have noticed that when I start a program immediately after I shut it down it comes up like lighting.).

In my best help desk prose, “let’s reboot now.”

5

This problem has been going on for a while, and the computer is shut down every day. I have looked on the Microsoft website to see if there is some kind of bug, but have had no luck so far.

6

Have you tried reinstalling Internet Explorer? I had some weird Explorer-related errors at work a few weeks ago after installing Visual Studio .NET. I got suspicious when an IE patch I tried to run to fix the problem told me I needed to have IE6 SP1 installed, but the IE Help | About screen told me SP1 was already installed. I re-ran the install for IE6 SP1, and when it told me all my components were already up to date, I clicked the “Install anyway” option. After the reinstall, problem solved. (The downside was I had to rerun all the IE patches again after the reinstall.)