h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am having an unusual number of Netscape crashes with the new format. They typically happen right as I post a new comments to a forum. I also crashed once when returning to My Space. I'm using Netscape 4.7 on a Windows 98 system. I've tried fiddling with various settings, but so far I've had no luck.

Netscape crashes for me on a fairly regular basis anyway... What type of crashes are you getting?

The crashes were Netscape Page Fault errors. All clicking "OK" to the error message, all Netsape windows would close and anything I had been writing (email or h2g2) would be lost.

However, I had forgotten I posted this here. Since then, I have found a solution. I upgraded from Netscape 4.7 to 4.74. The download was almost 20MB (huge for a 'bug fix'), but the crashes have pretty much stopped since then.

Interesting... Netscape does a similar thing to me, but clicking OK immediately brings up another identical error message, closing that one brings up another, and so on, and Windows refuses to shut down because Netscape is still running. I don't think it's h2g2 related, but I'm on here so often it's hard to tell if any other sites cause the same problem..

I think you are right EV - this sounds like a browser bug to me.

I can also report that upgrading from Netscape 4.5 to 4.6 makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

I tried 4.6 also at one point, and the crashes remained just as bad. I had to upgrade to 4.7 before I saw results.

*rummages around to see if he has 4.7 on a magazine freebie disc somewhere*

Could you post the error number and stack dump info that windows reports here and I'll see if that helps.

<>====uuu====<
(In Nerd mode )

Well, you asked for it... anyone of a nervous disposition should look away now!

First of all, I get this:

NETSCAPE caused an invalid page fault in module NETSCAPE.EXE at 0137:006dc30b.
Registers:
EAX=00000000 CS=0137 EIP=006dc30b EFLGS=00010202
EBX=00dd6680 SS=013f ESP=00b4f6dc EBP=00b4f71c
ECX=00000057 DS=013f ESI=00e33df0 FS=36cf
EDX=00e33fc0 KS=013f EDI=00000000 GS=377f
Bytes at CS:EIP:
83 79 08 04 75 08 8b 01 ff a0 54 01 00 00 c3 8b
Stack dump:
0071f8d9 00dd6680 00000001 00e33df0 00dd6680
00b4f734 7800143f 00000009 78001410 00e333e8
00000000 00e333e4 0071f8b8 00b4fb2c 0071fa04
ffffffff

Closing that gives me another error:

NETSCAPE caused a general protection fault in module ADVERT.DLL at 0137:028986f7.
Registers:
EAX=0094d030 CS=0137 EIP=028986f7 EFLGS=00010206
EBX=0168fb18 SS=013f ESP=01590050 EBP=01590090
ECX=00000000 DS=013f ESI=01590180 FS=29f7
EDX=81597088 ES=013f EDI=028ae740 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
83 39 00 74 5e e8 67 ef ff ff e8 50 8a fa ff 8b
Srack dump:
01590164 01590180 0168fb18 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 0168fb04
0168fb44 00000000 0001001f 01590180 0168fb18
01590164

Closing this window brings up another identical error, and another, and another, and so on.

(Apologies to anyone whose nose has started bleeding after reading this.)

There are known problems with Advert.dll when it can't communicate with its remote computer....going back to any version before 2.002 may fix this (internet search, I'm afraid, as I've removed it because advert.dll is spying on you! You may not like this... see http://grc.com/optout.htm to remove it)

Do you have any of "Go!zilla" or "Netvampire" installed? If so, uninstall them and then retry netscape.

HTH,
<>====uuu====<

*raises hand sheepishly at the mention of Go!zilla*
I always thought advert.dll sounded a bit suspicious...

Does your continued silence here indicate success or failure? Actually, if its the latter then how are you reading this? Yeh - thought I wouldn't notice...erm...
*seeks more coffee *

Seems okay so far... Netscape has crashed once since then, but with a different error message.