The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

Ganesh — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:42:20 GMT

I had a similar problems with configuring RAID on a NVIDIA board.

For the strangest of reasons it had reverted back from RAID to Non-Raid configuration.

Found out from the dumps that one of the driver was not happy on Windows 2008 , checked on Nvid's site for WS 2008 support for RAID drivers - didnt find any.

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

zrtom — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:55:46 GMT

Mark,

This is one of those articles I have returned-to several times. Great information! I have followed your work at Sysinternals and now Microsoft and am continually amazed. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

Petro — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:06:34 GMT

Thanks Mark.

Many of your articles read as a detective. In addition on a painful theme for me. Today I was looking biggest resources consumers on my system. It was very surprised that Windows Live Messenger use from 30 to 40 threads, it is the only program for instant messaging, while Visual Studio with ARCHSVN and Resharper addons satisfied with only 30 threads. Live Messenger retains over 800! GDI of objects, while Visio with a large scheme use them in all 400.

Programisty bad habits exist even in Microsoft, but learn from the mistakes they can become better. Could you find time to hold a lecture for the Windows Live Products department about economical use of system resources, because such impression, that they test the products on 32CPU monster with 2 TB of memory from next article?

P.S. I would give up the use of Live Messenger, however all my partners in the US use it.

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

David Richter — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:45:54 GMT

When I had trouble using wmplayer.exe, I did not make the association of its freezes because of a third party DLL. Windows Media Player would start, showing its user interface, and then freeze when a DVD would be inserted. I wish I used "attach to a process" when I tried WinDbg. My focus was on the high amount of private bytes, but should have realized that as an actual feature was used, a DLL would be virtually injected. If WinDbg wasn't listing the functions, It is hard to conceive of such a powerful tool as Process Explorer, chock full of case histories. Thank you, Mark.

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

blackhawkcrwchf — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:03:18 GMT

Mark,

This is my first reading from you and it was extremely interesting. I like the others in this blog found it to be very informational. I have my own part time PC repair company and I also build web pages and configure software. The information you placed in this article though was a little beyond me. I have to admit, I know allot about computers and I do think I am fairly knowledgable on most of what I do but I am still learning and I am not afraid to admit I do not know everything. I like others should always be willing to learn and today I did learn from this article. It was very informative. I have been for some time trying to figure some of the issues with IE's crash problems. Again, thank you and I do look forward to many more articles much as this one. The only and again I say the only issue I have is the steps you have to take to resolve the crash issue in IE is geared more torward someone who has tech experiance, not your average home user. Most home users are not going to understand the process of going through debugging nor setting up new registry settings. But again, great blog article. Thank you it helped me and Im sure many others.

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

combatexec — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:39:20 GMT

Again, great post, Mark! Once again, you help me walk through an IE/WMP problem that has been dogging me for a while.

We really need to freeze some of your brain cells for future generations, or maybe you can father my next grandchild...

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

Gastón — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:10:21 GMT

Excellent post Mark, as usual...

Sorry for my english, I'm from Argentina and out of practice.

I don't have the 0,0000000000001 % of your knowledge, but I discovered a similar error myself, but with a 915 Intel video 3D accel. internal card. The difference is that it took me 2 years to discover it was the drivers of the card because the freeze was so erratic and strong that I couldn't get any information of it with my XP pro system (or I didn't knew how to do it).

Finally, when I discarded everything else (with hardware checks and reinstalling software by software, even my XP), the only thing left was the drivers of the Intel card. AND THERE WAS THE PROBLEM!!! But with ANY VERSION of the drivers!!! So my only solution (since Intel left a lot of people -including me- with problems related to the 915 chipset cards) I bought a nVidia card and solve the issue...

Why is soooo difficult to make good video drivers? I know it's REALLY difficult, but we are talking about BIIIG corporations here...

Anyway, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.

You are a genius Mark.

Gastón.

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

dikewa — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:49:20 GMT

good artical. It's clear and easy to understand.

waiting for your new post.

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

Arthur — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:35:56 GMT

Mark, It quite obvious from this tutorial that soon Cows will be debugging applications. ( You made it that simple ). The STYLE in which you elucidated you points should be a model for all of Microsoft's support pages. It is so very clear. ( btw, I am going to use this on a pesky trojan horse ::))

re: The Case of the Random IE and WMP Crashes

Atul Gupta — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:52:57 GMT

Mark, great post. I have known that Windbg is very powerful and can help with lot of such crash issues. Just that i have never gone ahead and spent time to learn to use it. Is there any crash course guide or something available to help me with that?

On a side note, I have seen the Checkpoint Securemote VPN software causing blue screens on my Vista every time I enable it on my Lan connection. The crash isn't predictable and happens anytime during the day. I hence have to keep it disabled. Have you come across this?