SOLVED Firefox and IE crashing in build 9879

[george]

I had a fully updated Win8.1 system that I installed the new .iso on top. (Foolishly I thought I was building a dual boot system, but I screwed it up) Now Win 10 seems to be pretty well behaved except FF (and also IE) crashes on opening. My Thunderbird email works just fine, and I managed to get to this forum using Tango Browser from the Store. When I try to run any of the troubleshooters, they start to open and immediately exit. I have a very nice Lenovo Ultrabook with an i7 CPU and SSD and 8GB RAM. Any ideas why this selective crashing? One other tidbit,: I had Virtual Box version that was working, but slowly. It also now crashes on opening.

 

[Dipsy]

Hello George. I've no idea why your browsers would be crashing. I'm using Firefox and Windows Live Mail with no issues at all and I've had IE open on occasion also. I wonder if removing and reinstalling Firefox might correct the problem which may be the result of installing Win 10 preview on top of Win 8.1.

 

[Trouble]

My first suggestion is to go to windows updates in the control panel and check manually to make sure that you have all Windows updates installed.
Sounds like there could possibly be some system files corrupted during the install. You may want to try resetting IE to factory and uninstalling Firefox completely (google it as there are quite a few steps) and then reinstall it. Make sure you save your user data (profile, bookmarks, etc.,) to some external resource.

 

[george]

Dipsy, Thanks for your reply. Yes, I downloaded The FF setup on another machine (the only way I could get it), and did a clean install. It crashed on open as well.

 

[george]

Noob, I made sure all the updates were successful before I ever opened FF. I tried uninstalling the one regarding IE that has caused others some grief. No difference and Update has since reinstalled it. I never intentionally use IE, so it must be nearly pristine on my system as is. I could use Revo to uninstall it, but how to reset it to "factory"? Are there data files that need replacing? Tia.

 

[Trouble]

Some things you can try regarding IE http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/ie-crashes-stops-working#ie=ie-11
Resetting is described in there as well.

 

[george]

Some things you can try regarding IE http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/ie-crashes-stops-working#ie=ie-11
Resetting is described in there as well.

Trouble, Thank you for that! All stuff I should know about IE! Unfortunately, most of the techniques require starting the program and selecting settings, or similar. The program just won't allow any of that. It immediately reports "Internet Explorer has stopped working". I did turn IE off in Windows features, rebooted, turned back on and rebooted again with no improvement.. Tomorrow's another day

 

[Trouble]

Try using "Internet Options" in Control Panel. You should be able to perform the reset from there.

 

[george]

Try using "Internet Options" in Control Panel. You should be able to perform the reset from there.

Thanks again, Trouble. I did the reset under the IE advanced tab, rebooted. IE and FF and my Oracle Box all still refuse to open. I am using the Tango browser to access this forum. (The December update for Win10 installed successfully). Anything else you can think of, I ask, hopefully

 

[Trouble]

Normally, I would suggest using the native System File Checker from an administrative command prompt.
sfc /scannow
However; recent experience seems to indicate that in the Tech Preview that particular feature / utility is sometimes less than reliable in the form of results.
Still might be worth a try.
I assume that you have secured any and all critical data to a reliable external resource??
It might be time to attempt some more drastic procedures.... A refresh, or reset might prove beneficial and while I haven't yet attempted an inplace upgrade / repair of the new build of the Tech Preview, that might be an option.
Lastly, I would guess that your Lenovo would have the necessary features in place to perform a factory reset using the proper function keys at POST and availing yourself of the Lenovo Recovery Partition to set everything back like the day you brought it home.
Drastic and time consuming all, but perhaps a more worthwhile use of your time, rather than contending with and Operating System that would seem to have some serious issues.
I know that when the Tech Preview first became available, I purposely upgraded my Windows 8.1 primary computer to the available build (9841 as I recall) and was not at all happy with the results, after a day or so of fiddling I promptly recovered with an Acronis Image I had made just for that purpose.

 

[george]

Normally, I would suggest using the native System File Checker from an administrative command prompt.
sfc /scannow
However; recent experience seems to indicate that in the Tech Preview that particular feature / utility is sometimes less than reliable in the form of results.
Still might be worth a try.
I assume that you have secured any and all critical data to a reliable external resource??
It might be time to attempt some more drastic procedures.... A refresh, or reset might prove beneficial and while I haven't yet attempted an inplace upgrade / repair of the new build of the Tech Preview, that might be an option.
Lastly, I would guess that your Lenovo would have the necessary features in place to perform a factory reset using the proper function keys at POST and availing yourself of the Lenovo Recovery Partition to set everything back like the day you brought it home.
Drastic and time consuming all, but perhaps a more worthwhile use of your time, rather than contending with and Operating System that would seem to have some serious issues.
I know that when the Tech Preview first became available, I purposely upgraded my Windows 8.1 primary computer to the available build (9841 as I recall) and was not at all happy with the results, after a day or so of fiddling I promptly recovered with an Acronis Image I had made just for that purpose.

The sfc scan reported that it found some corrupt files and was unable to fix some of them, produced a very large log file that I am unable to interpret meaningfully.

I have access to another desktop system currently updated to build 9841 that works reasonably well for my limited needs. I would be very happy to be able to roll back this crippled 9879 system to that build, or one in between, if I could, and just wait for MS to continue improvements.

Assuming, I'm guessing, that is not possible, then I would prefer to attempt repairing rather than going all the way back to Win7 with the Lenovo Recovery. How would I go about the upgrade / repair you mentioned? The only System Recovery I can find listed was from yesterday "before the critical update".

 

[Trouble]

Generally speaking an in place upgrade / repair involves running the setup.exe from the installation media, from within a running Operating System.
So basically you just insert your installation source (DVD or USB) and run setup and choose upgrade when prompted as described here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2255099
That's an old article and as I've said earlier, I have not had an opportunity to try it on the Tech Preview but I suspect it should work pretty much the same as in previous versions of Windows.
It is generally non-destructive and your programs and drivers should remain intact, but remember nothing is fool proof so backup, backup, backup.
Whether or not it will remedy your problem(s), I cannot say for certain.

 

[george]

Trouble, I bit the bullet (more like a cannonball ) and did a reset. IE now works and tells me which apps were wiped - more than 90! - including Firefox and most of the stuff I use regularly. But many thanks for your help, and also to Ian for the Shift + Restart tip from his article on Safe mode in Win10.