Internet Explorer crashing when opening a new window

[pwds]

Our Music Department are currently running tests using Kaleidos Learning Platform and having considerable problems with Internet Explorer intermitently crashing when it opens a new window.

All browser windows and tabs are "instantly" lost.

This mostly affects students using Kaleidos but has also affected staff using our intranet and e-mail.

What I have done to try and resolve it (in this order)-
*Uninstalled Shockwave using Adobe Tool
*Uninstalled Flash using Adobe Tool
*Installed Internet Explorer 8
*Re-installed Flash
*Re-installed Shockwave


Using AD I have also upgraded Java 5 v 9 (kept for legacy support) and 6 v 18 (what's actually running for most websites) to JRE 6 v 20 (current).

ALL plugins other than Impero and Sophos have now been upgraded, as has the browser. There has been no change to the behaviour.

Platform Windows XP SP3 connecting to Server 2003 domain and using SW UTM to connect to EMBC for internet.

Impero and Sophos are up to date.

[pwds]

I have currently set Group Policy to disable all Add-Ons other than Shockwave, WMP and Java.

With any luck that will mean any problem with Impero, Sophos or Adobe Acrobat (amongst others) will be removed and we won't see the crash. As always I'll let you know how we get on.

[pwds]

Could it be anything to do with this?

Oddly I found a way to consistently make IE do this, but that stopped after I installed Impero workstation on the computer.

I did reboot the workstation as part of the installation though so that could just be a co-incidence.

[Gerry]

You can run IE8 with all add-ons disabled - run "iexplore -extoff". Now see if you can get it to crash. Also, perhaps Java is causing the problem. Give this program a go: RaProducts - JavaRa documentation

[pwds]

Right, I know what it is, and it's something I thought I'd already ruled out.

Turns out the Shockwave Uninstaller doesn't actually uninstall Shockwave, at least not if it has been installed from an MSI. As Adobe insist on releasing each MSI with the same name the previous MSI has now been overwritten with a updated one so we have two instances of Adobe Shockwave Player in the Add/Remove Programmes list, the previous version won't however run or uninstall.

Adobe don't appear to release legacy versions of the Shockwave player to sysadmins or developers (at least not that I've spotted) so I'm not sure what to do other than visit 700 computers and run the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility on each and every one.