Couple of Very annoying problems

[Xality]

Hello,

I got two problems

1) Internet Explorer randomly crashes, e.g I was browsing through these forums and it was fine.. clicked on post new thread and it had an fatal error and crashed...

Sometimes it crashes the active window I am on and all others are left intact, sometimes they all crash and the worse case scenenario... they all crash and I cant browse the internet anymore and the only solution is to reboot.

2) Explorer.exe seems to crash when I minimize Windows Media Player, not all the time but the majority of times, specially if I am running an application that takes a lot of processor power...

I know the easiest solution is to re-install XP but thats well annoying, is there another way?

[beeboy]

To quote known_criminal; "you can go to start, then run, type sfc / scannow have the xp cd in the drive, close the welcome screen if it comes up, ok the system file checker to run, if this does not fix the system files try a reinstall/repair, as long as you do not format you wont loose your files, you may have to reinstall some programs and service packs/windows updates.

[ESALADUANE]

This sometimes works:

1. From the Start menu, select Search, select All Files and Folders.
2. Select More Advanced Options and place a checkmark beside Search Hidden Files and Folders option.
3. Ensure that Search System Folders and Search Subfolders are also checked.
4. In the All or Part of the File Name box, type ie.inf
5. In the Look In drop-down menu, select C: or the letter of the hard drive that contains the Windows folder.
6. Click the Search button. In the search results pane, find the ie.inf file located in Windows\Inf folder.
7. Right click the ie.inf file and click Install on the context menu.
8. Reboot the computer when the file copy process is complete.

[Grendel]

For a big clue on the cause get the Mod Name, it is the file that is probably causing your problems.

I assume an error report is generated when it happens, you know the "Send...Don't Send" window.
On that window click on "click here" for technical information.
On that screen look for Mod Name: "file name".

If it is there, try to match the file to a program, just type it into Google and see what hits you get.

More than likely it is a piece of spyware, they like to break IE and Explorer.