Netscape crashes in Windows - solutions?

[Stacy Pober]

Garry, 

You don't mention any other programs running in background - are there
any?  Unlike some of the others who have chimed in on this, we've had 
no particular problems running Netscape 4.61 either on back office 
computers or on our public workstations - and some of our computers 
are Dell Dimension P100c models that had only 16MB of RAM until a 
recent upgrade.  So I tend to think that the level of machine and 
memory is not causing your problem. 

At some point I experimented with protecting the preferences on the 
public machines by making the prefs.js file read-only.  This had the
unfortunate effect of causing many crashes.  Sure, it protected the
prefs - it also made the application seize up in the process.  (I now
have them set to write a saved 'backup' prefs.js at every bootup.)

If you want to check if it may be a software problem caused by a 
background program, try invoking the task manager (ctrl/alt/delete)
when you have no other apps running and look at what is running in
background. You can try closing the background apps through 
task manager and then use Netscape to see if the same problems
occur.  Alternatively, you can disable the background apps temporarily
through the msconfig program and then reboot for a clean startup.    
program and then rebooting.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend an upgrade to 4.7 since, from what I've
read it sounds like it introduced as many bugs as it fixed.  Of course, 
your mileage may vary.

Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Libraries
spober at manhattan.edu

>From: "Gary E. Masters" <gmasters at tamiu.edu>
>For some time now, Netscape Communicator4.61 has been crashing on my
>Windows 98 (second edition) workstation.  It is a Dell dimension with 
>96 meg of ram, so I don't think it is memory.  When it happens, I get 
>a message "this program has performed an illegal operation" or 
>something like that, it will not work until I reboot the system.
> 
>I have been putting up with this, but others have had the same problem and have asked me how to fix it.  Can anyone suggest what to do?
> 
> Upgrade?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gary Masters
> Gary E. Masters
> Automated Services Librarian
> (956) 326-2137 (office)
> (956)326-2399
> (fax)
>