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M
mdjunk
Participant
August 8, 2014
Question

Crashing IE

  • August 8, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 327 views

Running Windows 8.1 with IE 11.

I have been having a lot of problems with tabs crashing IE.  I finally have traced the problem to the Shockwave Flash player.  When I have the Flash plug-in enabled, IE crashes.  When I disable it, everything works fine (except for certain videos of course).

I have gone through a bunch of steps to uninstall Flash, but it is apparently embedded in IE 11.

I do not see Flash when I go to Add/Remove programs.

I found an uninstall Flash program; downloaded that and ran it.

I found some help article instructing me to delete several files in the SysWow folder; did that.

When I attempt to install Flash, every Adobe webpage simply tells me that

"Either Flash Player is disabled or ActiveX Filter is ON.

Please follow trouble shooting steps to play Flash content."

The trouble shooting does not help, and enabling Flash only causes the browser to crash.

Any additional resources I can read through?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    M
    mdjunkAuthor
    Participant
    August 14, 2014

    Shamelessly bumping this up.

    Also, occasionally the player gets enabled, causing me to have to into IE settings and disable it.

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024
    Inspiring
    August 15, 2014

    On Windows 8 and higher, Flash Player is actually built directly into Internet Explorer, and is distributed by Microsoft via Windows Update.  There's nothing to download.  It's the same deal with Chrome.  Flash is a built-in component distributed by Google as part of the Chrome update process.

    For Firefox (and I've been hearing rumors that you can't download Firefox for Windows 8.1 anymore, but I haven't verified it myself yet) and other NPAPI Plug-In based browsers, you would still need to download Flash Player from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer.

    My guess is that it's related to your video drivers, as I've seen a number of newer Win8.1 devices with similar problems over the last couple weeks.  Writing graphics drivers is insanely hard, and it takes a while for them to really stabilize on new platforms.

    If you disable hardware acceleration and the crashes go away, it's your graphics drivers:

    How to enable or disable software rendering in Internet Explorer 9

    If that's the case, I'd like to get detailed information on the graphics hardware and drivers, so that I can report the issue to the appropriate vendor.

    To do that, do the following:

    Launch a command prompt

    Type: dxdiag

    Hit Enter

    Choose Save All Information and save the file to your desktop or something

    Copy the contents and past them into a reply here.

    If disabling hardware doesn't work, it's probably a bug in Flash.  I'll need to reproduce the crash in order to debug it effectively.  The following information will help.

    - An exact link or link(s) to pages where the crash occurs.  If it occurs consistently, that's ideal.

    - Step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce the crash

    Thanks!

    M
    mdjunkAuthor
    Participant
    August 22, 2014

    Sorry for the delayed response; been traveling w/out the machine for over a week.

    The hotfix in the link you posted doesn't work on IE 11 so I went to Tools\Internet Options, then the Advanced tab and found that the checkbox next to Use Software Rendering Instead of GPU rendering was unchecked.  For grins I went ahead and turned it on and restarted.  Same effect.  When I go to this page IE crashes without regard to the setting for that option:  Photo implies ISIS threat to Chicago | WGN-TV.  Sorry for the content of the story; it is just the one that I can reliably get to crash my browser.   I also crash regularly on facebook or really any site that has videos.  To reproduce, I simply open the page and wait, or scroll and wait.

    So now I need to uncheck the Software Rendering option and disable the shockwave plugin or I crash and the browser locks up like crazy.  Any other diagnostic info I can provide?

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