This site keeps crashing me

Ok... not sure what's going on here now, but over the last couple of weeks, for some reason, when I come to this board and start looking at the posts etc, my computer will sometimes just completely crash. C/A/DEL will not even work... I have to press the reset switch and go through scandisk etc to get back up and running.

This is the only site I get this problem with... so is there a known bug that this board's software is doing.

Here are some details.

Using AOL8 (UK VERSION) with it's version of IE6.
WIN ME.
Allowing this site's cookie for log on.
Using CacheSentry for additional cache control.

So is this just me that this happens to... is it my setup as outlined above... is it a fault in my computer (but then why just this site)... or is it a known issue.

Any help would be appreaciated otherwise I'll have to cut loose and not be able to visit here as I hate having to do this forced reset thing.

By the way... it's not every visit... it's a random intermittent thing, but still very unwanted.

 

Hi zarzenz,

I have never heard this one before.
Did you ever find any common factors in the threads that cause this behavior?
When I visit using IE, I notice hangs on the ICQ icons f.e. in this thread: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=10422;start=15

Regards,

Pieter

 

I went to the link you gave and I got no icons on the stars that appear under the members names... just blank boxes... I seem to get a lot of missing icons from time to time.

Anyway... within a few seconds... as my little blue bar was almost at it's fully refreshed position... I crashed again... complete freeze.

So I just tried something.

Went to control panel and tried to do a repair of IE. It said it couldn't do it because the three following files are the wrong version.

licmgr10.dll
pngfilt.dll
jsproxy.dll

they are all version 5.50.4134.600 and it says they should all be 6.0.2800 or greater.

So I haven't got a clue what's happened now because all I did was upgrade to AOL8 which automatically upgraded my previous perfect working IE5.5 to 6 and then I did all the Windows updates for SP1 etc. as advised by the update site.

So I'm not sure how I got these bad versions of these 3 dll's still in my system folder and how I'm supposed to change/update them.

Don't even know if this is the problem, but I sure would like to have been able to run the repair option without being told about these old dll's.

Strange how things like this just happen out of the blue. Leaves me feeling quite sad sometimes.

Oh yeah... another thing... I'm still not getting notifications of replies from this board. Seems I'm not doing very well with this site just now, but it seems to be from when the board changed it's software.

 

zarzenz,

If you like, IM or mail me your e-mail address and I will send you the correct versions of the files including instructions.
This is most likely the cause for your crashes.
I couldn´t find any download sites for these dll´s where I could be sure they were trustworthy and had the correct version.

Regards,

Pieter

 

Thank you for that suggestion Pieter.

I will do that now.

I have been doing some google searches myself and it does appear that this is an issue... so I wonder why it happens. I even tried running the setup of IE6 again... but it made no difference so it seems that these 3 system files don't get updated when IE5.5 is updated to IE6... or at least this can happen on some systems.

 

Hi zarzenz,

Check your mail.

HTH,

Pieter

 

Thank you Pieter... got those 3 system dll's fine.

But... I've hit a problem here.

I followed your advice to move the old dll's to another place (I created a new folder just for them) and then when I attempted to copy the files you sent me into the system directory, I got a message saying the files are already there and do I want to overwrite them.

I didn't understand how this happened because I did MOVE them... not COPY them out of there.

So I checked again and indeed the 3 files where now in the place I moved them to but the old ones had recreated themselves back in the system directory.

Anyway, I decided not to overwrite them as I didn't know if this would cause a problem and then I tried to delete them... and off they went to the recycle bin with no apparent problem.

Then... blow me down... they came back again.

So I decided to do a little search for advice and came across an article at Microsoft that says system files are protected and cannot be moved or modified... they have something called SFP that stops this being done, even when programs try to update them during an installation.

So... what I can't understand is this.

If IE6 is a Microsoft update how come they don't allow for these 3 dll's to be modified in some way... surely Microsoft should be able to update their own system files when one of their own applications require it.

But it seems not... this SFP is stopping this to happen.

So how many other IE6 updates are in use on folks systems with these outdated files I wonder.

The other question now is... is there a way to ''force'' these new dll's to be either overwritten or replaced in Windows itself without having to mess about in DOS which is something I have absolutely no idea of how to play with.

Anyway... many thanks Pieter... we nearly got there til this SFP kicked in, which is obviously a good thing to have under most circumstances but certainly not when system files have to be updated... then it's a pain.

 

Hi zarzenz,

Dumb of me not to tell you.

Once you have copies of the old files in a safe place you can overwrite the old versions.
SFP shouldn´t bother you then.
I wish SFP had raised havoc when the IE6 versions were overwritten by older ones.

Little reading: http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/sr-sfp.htm

Regards,

Pieter

 

I tried it... copied the new files into the system folder... it asked if I wanted to overwrite... I said yes and then rechecked the properties of the ''overwritten file'' but... it still had the old version number, so it appears that SFP does stop overwrites of protected files.

Hmmm... not sure what to do now.

I looked at your link... very useful... but it does seem to imply that indeed these manual overwrites are not possible. It says that they can be updated via a correct installation procedure... see below...

What SFP watches for are attempts to open protected files for writes. It does not monitor the contents of these files (the overhead would be onerous if it did, though checksums are wonderful things), it does not prevent "upgrades" of these files if done though the accepted installation process, and it won't pick up wild writes or cross-links that corrupt them without opening them by name.

 

Hi zarzenz,

I can imagine this is getting mighty frustrating, but I want to try everything possible to keep you here.

According to this MS site: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q328601&gssnb=1 you can circumvent SFP in safe mode:

"To disable SFP, press F8 while the system is starting, and then select Safe Mode when you receive a prompt. Replace the file, and then restart the system."

Worth a try?

Regards,

Pieter

 

Hi Pieter,

Yes... this looks like a good possibility.

Ok... I will try this and see what happens.

Many thanks for your help here with this.

 

It worked Pieter.

I now have the 3 files installed in the system folder.

Only one question now.

Do I still have to run the command regsvr32 for each file as you advised or are these files ok now.

As it happens I did try to do it but got an error message saying something about the registry and to use Pview... but now I have come here and all is working at the moment so maybe that is not required now as the overwrite in safe mode went ok.

Many thanks for helping me with this.

I have to go for a little while now but will check here again later today.

 

Great.

As long as it works and you can keep visiting it´s all OK by me.

Regards,

Pieter

 

Good job, guys!
Glad you can come here, zarzenz.

Douglas

 

Thanks Pieter and Douglas,

Yes.. everything seems good at the moment.

I will see now if the crashing problem is solved... so far so good.

Zarzenz