My browsers Keep Crashing

[jollyjohn]

G'day

My browsers keep crashing, often. I use Chrome, Firefox and Opera. Chrome is faster to restart but sometimes I have to do a total reboot. I use Windows 7 32 and Windows 64 Ultimate (up to date), but it doesn't make any difference which one I use.

Would it be graphic card problem? I'm using a "P5G41C-M LX" MB, on board graphic card and 8 GB RAM.

Could anyone help me with this problem? It's been like this since I put the system together.

Regards

John

[Baldrick]

Maybe it's flash that crashes. Try disable it/uninstall it.

[Ai Haibara]

Are the crashes consistent - do they happen at the same time, or randomly? With the same pages?

Which versions of the browsers are you running? For Firefox, assuming you're not experiencing random crashing, you might try visiting their Plugin Check site, and see if it mentions whether or not any of your plugins are in dire need of updating. (If you've got any extensions blocking Javascript, like NoScript, be sure to temporarily enable it for that site.)

Also, for Firefox, you might try running in Safe Mode, and see if the problem persists, there. Recent versions of Firefox have a direct method of restarting in Safe Mode: Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled...

Just to be safe, you're sure your system is spyware/virus-free?

[jollyjohn]

Maybe it's flash that crashes. Try disable it/uninstall it.

Do you mean Flash player? or What flash?

The crashes occur randomly on any page.

I'm 99% sure the system is clean.

The problem started from day one with all the browsers. I have re installed windows a few times, for other reasons, and the problem persists. I have two other PCs with WXP and never had this issue.

Thank you for your answers

John

[mike20021969]

Do you mean Flash player?

Yes, I believe he does.

As there are 2 flavours of Adobe Flash player (one for IE, and one for other browsers), that "might" explain why Firefox, Opera & Chrome crash.
Does Internet Explorer crash?
(By crash, do you mean they become unresponsive/freeze during use?).

What version of Flash player do you have installed? 11.3.300.265 is currently the latest version of Flash player.

[jollyjohn]

I never use IE so I don't know.

Yes. Chrome becomes unresponsive or I have to reset to get the graphic back.

Opera and FF turn off all together and wont restart unless reboot.

I dont know what Ver. of slash I have but Update every time I get the auto update notice. I'll DL the latest.

Thanks

[mike20021969]

I never use IE so I don't know.

It might be worth giving it a try to see what happens - if only to eliminate something else/another cause.

[jman98]

I never use IE so I don't know.

Yes. Chrome becomes unresponsive or I have to reset to get the graphic back.

Opera and FF turn off all together and wont restart unless reboot.

I dont know what Ver. of slash I have but Update every time I get the auto update notice. I'll DL the latest.

Thanks

I cannot state this emphatically enough - this is VERY VERY WRONG. Something is very messed up with your PC. It is not normal at all - ever - to have to reboot to get a browser working.

Chrome is built with Flash so you cannot update Chrome's Flash yourself.

If you can get a dump file when a browser crashes it might be possible to examine it and find out what really caused the crash. I'm just going to be blunt - this is not going to be easy. You are either going to have to do this yourself or pay someone to rebuild your PC to fix this.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Capturing_a_minidump

[sanlyn]

I never use IE so I don't know.

Never? How did you get Windows updates without using Internet Explorer?

I would discount malware as a cause, as it happens in both versions of Windows. Exactly the same malware would have to be imbedded in both systems (possible, but not likely). That leaves virtually anything and everything as a cause. It could be your antivirus -- if you're running more than one AV product, that's an obvious cause. Then there's possibly a bad RAM chip, hardware conflicts, size and position of your dual boot partitions, some software product common to both systems, improper installation of chipset drivers for both versions of Windows. . . and on and on. You'd have to have a complete lookover of both systems to determine the cause -- hardware and software. It would have to be something common to both systems.

[lordsmurf]

Firefox.
FlashBlock plugin.

The end.

[jman98]

Firefox.
FlashBlock plugin.

The end.

Maybe. But it might also be an issue with Java.

[sanlyn]

Again, maybe. But Chrome is crashing as well.

I understand that your browsers freeze up, they don't respond to mouse or keyboard. Does this mean your entire system freezes (totally non-responsive) and you have to use a restart button or unplug your machine to reboot? Or is it just the browser software that freezes but other apps in Windows are OK? Do these browsers have a common add-on toolbar installed?

BTW, if you have 8-GB of RAM and using Windows 32-bit, you can only access 4 GB of RAM unless you're using something like PAE in Win7 to extend address access. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[ranchhand]

I hate to say it, but this could be caused by a failed browser hijack attempt and its messing with the browser. Especially if it is a badly coded rootkit infection it could affect all browsers running on your unit. Browser crashes will usually generate an error message of some kind, not just suddenly close down. Suggestion: run Malwarebytes and after that run Combofix (read the instructions on Combofix first, its a little bit tricky at times). If you run a Hijack This log you may see the footprint of the virus if it is there. If you want a good website for antivirus help I can post one.

[mike20021969]

I hate to say it, but this could be caused by a failed browser hijack attempt and its messing with the browser. Especially if it is a badly coded rootkit infection it could affect all browsers running on your unit.

Surely not still after numerous OS installs?

[sanlyn]

Mike has a point: reinstalling will reformat everything, including the installed partitions. Some rootkits like TDSS do create their own hidden partition. But how one of those would affect both systems at the same time in the same way is another matter.

Try using some other apps, memopry hogs like word processors and video apps. Get up a long video processing run that takes a lot of time (MCTemporalDenoise is a good one to try, it can run for hours). Or open 7 or 8 word processing pages that will eat up some RAM, run some other apps at the same time, but not browsers (we already know those will freeze). If you can, might be a good idea to open up Windows Task Manager. Take a look at the "Performance" window and see how much memory and CPU time you're using while you do this. You might make a list of everything running in "Processes" (rootkits and trojans won't show up here, but maybe some other process is crapping out).

I'd check the ASUS website to see if there are new MB drivers: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5G41CM_LX/#download

Likely this will turn out to be something rather simple. But it could be anything.

[ranchhand]

JollyJohn said:

I have re installed windows a few times, for other reasons, and the problem persists. I have two other PCs with WXP and never had this issue.

When you reinstalled Windows, did you first delete all partitions, reset a single partition and then reformat?
Did you immediately try Internet Explorer before you installed anything else, and did it crash?

[sanlyn]

The O.P. claims his Windows were fully updated, but he's never used Internet Explorer. Except for installing a stand-alone Service Pack, Windows can't be updated without using Internet Explorer unless the O.P. went through the trouble of downloading and manually installing a few years' worth of Microsoft updates individually. That would take days. Standalone service packs have pre-requisite readiness updates for them to work properly.

Thewre are several antivirus programs that are known to cause browser freeze-ups (Norton, AVG, Avira, among others) and those great "free" browser toolbars don't help. There is an error here that is common to both installs. It would be impossible to pinpoint without having someone actually look into the PC.

I'm now wondering how the O.P. has managed to install Windows "several times" without eventually going thru a reactivation routine with Microsoft.

[AlanHK]

Get Process Explorer and you can see what is running.
Also when a program crashes it often doesn't completely shut down and stays in memory, and prevents you from restoring it.
You can use PE to kill any such process that is lingering. Also a fast way to reboot if you really need to.

I'm having more and more browser problems due to insane amounts of Flash on some pages. Everything stops for seconds, or minutes even while it loads, or freezes. PE shows CPU usage by the browser going up to 100%. It's very wearying and I often just disable Flash completely so I can just read the damn text without waiting for some stupid video ad to start playing.

[Nelson37]

So, it's been locking up ever since you built it? Fascinating.

Describe Windows re-install procedure, relative to re-partition and format, as requested previously.

Describe usage pattern for the PC, as in what other software or operations are used.

Describe what happens if you boot up and do absolutely nothing for a period of time. The length of time should be about double what it usually takes, on average, to experience the lockup.

[hello_hello]

Anything's possible, but single piece of software or malware which crashes all three browsers and just the browsers doesn't sound likely to me. Are you sure it's only the browsers which crash, or could it seem like the browsers are crashing because you have one of them running most of the time?

I'd wonder if you might have some sort of a hardware issue, or maybe a software/driver issue which is effecting Windows and as you're generally using one of the browsers.....

[ranchhand]

Hi Hello_Hello and Mike.... I currently, at this time, have a Toshiba laptop/ I am working on, and get this: the internet connect is 100%, I ping the IP address and ping Google.com and it returns 4 packets, full connection. The Network Properties is giving me 5 bars and states I am connected to the internet. MIE, Chrome and Firefox all message me "cannot make connection with website". That's all. For giggles I installed Safari from Apple-it connects and shoots me to any web page I want, fast and clean. I threw everything I had at this unit, Malware bytes would load but not connect to update indexes. Is that suspicious or not? Ok, I used Freebird's distro and guess what, it found a virus in the paging file (of all the god-forsaken places to locate a virus). It's still running, but I strongly suspicion I found the problem when this is done. Yes, you can have a virus do exactly what the OP's problem is.

[sanlyn]

What? This is still going? Last bet is to run combofix, on both installs.

BTW, if you reformat a partition and/or run a complete reinstall of either Windows version, the old pagefile has been destroyed.

[jollyjohn]

I had bad RAM, all well now.

[sanlyn]

Aaah, yes. Bad RAM. How many times have I been fooled by misbehaving RAM until I saw other symptoms leading me to that. So you must have had problems other than browsers crashing. A memory hog like Word would have crashed as well. That is, if your system had run long enough to notice it.

Anyway, good work.

[jollyjohn]

It gave me blue screen of memory dumps more and more frequently. I downloaded memtest86 free program and ran it for about 6 Hrs. (not t the end) it was enough to detect more than 1700 errors.

You need to extract the ISO from memtest86 and burn a bootable CD, I did in ImgBurn, then insert the disk in the drive and reboot. Too easy.

John

[ginetic20]

i have the same problem just recently and ram nowadays really gives headache to the users. you will never know what shit is happening to your PC because it looks like just a bad viruses and it turns out that the ram is just malfunctioning damn it!. well i too run memtest to check the ram, i have dual channel of ram 32gb running at 2400mhz and it seems that the ram is wrecked because of the overclocking and idk why? because my XMP default OC is 2400mhz (factory advice OC). so i decided to send it back to the store and have a look to it and its still under warranty thank god! now the ram is good and running for a year now! but to make sure it wont happen again i add my ram to my water cooling loop.

ohh and one more thing when using memtest!? if you dont want to boot just to test your ram? use oracle virtualbox! it will open a windows from boot! have a nice day everyone! cheers!

[paul88ks]

Seems to be a common problem here- Opera,Firefox, stop working while watching videos - haven't tried Chrome or Safari yet, but I will be in the middle of a video- you tube or any other site - streaming video- adult sites- and I get an error message - Opera has encountered a problem and needs to close- same message with every browser- HP dual core processor ,4 gigs of ram- this one has me baffled- I did a Belarc profile if that would help- can post results here- also - Advance system care pro 7 and Iobit malware fighter and Mcafee antivirus and internet security! any comments would be welcome!