This is a problem that has cropped up in the past month or so. When I go to a few websites, and so far they have all been newspapers such as the New York Times and Denver Post, Explorer crashes.
I get the following error message in a box titled “Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library”:
This program has requested to Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application’s support team for more information. **
Then, sometimes, I get another little box in the bottom right corner of my desktop telling me Adobe Flash Player has stopped working properly, and prompting me to install an upgrade, even though I have already confirmed I have the latest version.
I have uninstalled and re-installed Flash several times. I have also updated from Explorer version 7 point something to version 8.0.6001.
If I leave Flash uninstalled, I can go to the web page without crashing, but I can’t watch most of the embedded videos.
Forgot to mention I have some antivirus and antimalware software (Spyware Doctor) and an optimizer utility (Advanced System Optimizer) that have not detected any problems. I wondered whether the registry optimizer had some effect, but a reinstall of Flash after optimizing the registry hasn’t helped.
Usually I also get a message at the top of the web page saying that a Popup has been blocked – before it crashes. Don’t really know if that’s related to enything else.
Optimizing the registry is really not the best thing you can do, but I don’t think it’s necessarily causing your problems.
When you say you reinstalled Flash, did you actually run the uninstaller tool first? You definitely need to. Normal uninstalling doesn’t necessarily remove everything. Adobe explicitly recommends restarting your computer after the uninstall.
If you still have problems, you may want to downgrade to version 10.0.45 of Flash, instead of version 10.1. Adobe makes it difficult to do, so try this link to OldApps.com.
Disable all your plug-ins. Restart IE8. If the problem is gone, enable plug -ins one by one, and restart IE8 after each one, until the problem occurs again. That will identify the one that is causing the problem.
At the very least, with Firefox I can go to these web pages, with Flash installed, and the browser doesn’t crash. Assuming Firefox doesn’t give me any unpleasant surprises I will stick with it.
First of all I would remove FLASH with Revo Uninstaller. It’s a free version that removes programs very thoroughly. Then Before I reinstall FLASH I’d do this:
I would use Microsoft Security Essentials, I found it catches things, Spybot, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, AVG and Avast have missed.
Download the correct version. Then update it. Then close out the program. This is very important. You may have to go to your task manager to close it out. You then want to RIGHT CLICK on MS Securities Essentials and choose “Run as administrator.” This is very important as you need it to fully remove anything it finds.
Then run the scan. If you find anything, then reboot the computer and then I’d run another scan of AVG or Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware again just to make sure all things are cleaned out.
I would also do a restore of IE8 back to it’s original settings.
At the top of the page
Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced (tab)
About 2/3 down the page there is a “restore to default” button.
I haven’t done this in a while, so I’m not sure if you lose your book marks or not, but you may want to back those up just in case.