IE/Firefox = crash on startup... HELP!

The_Finn

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Feb 7, 2005
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Location
Worcestersheshershire MA
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99 Volvo V70R
The Story:

Moms laptop which is old and decrepit. She says she received a "windows update" message about a week ago and hit the OK button. however i did not receive any such message on my computer so god knows what she "updated" but ever since the "update" we have been having an issue with Both FireFox and IE

The Problem:
Both IE and Firefox crash on startup... IE will actually load the window and then crash before it can display the homepage. FF never even makes it to the window stage basically you double click the icon and instantly get the "FF has encountered a problem do you want to report" dialog box. Now the interesting bit. If i disable plugins/addons in both IE or FF they both start fine infact i am posting from the effected computer right now just that the browser is currently set to safe mode. Also AVG has been erroring out as well.

So yeah thats it i have done some basic google searching but come up with nothing. The AVG issue kinda scares me since the MO of more than a few viruses is to disable anti-virus. Anyway any help would be greatly appreciated thanks. Obviously +1 to whomever finds a fix that doesn't involve reformating.
 
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First thing i did. I have uninstalled and reinstalled FireFox twice and it's still crashing
 
Tried Opera?

and open up msconfig, check your startup section, see if any weird program/virus is messing with your pc.
 
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Also maybe check your list of running processes against a list of what they are - google search should bring up a few
 
Sounds like something (probably a virus, but it could be a botched update) is messing up your TCP/IP stack. Try booting from a rescue disc (BartPE or something) and running an antivirus program on the whole drive. If that comes out clean, try restoring to a point a couple of weeks ago, or just do a windows repair install.
 
ProcMon is available from sysinternals for free, and will show you what's running and how (command line and the like). the trick is finding the correct process.
 
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