Kelly's Recent IE Crashes/Browse in New Process

[Chad Harris]

Five questions:

Kelly has a recent tweak in her list:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

*Line 313 Right: IE Crashes Browse in New Process*

1) I'm trying to understand what this does. I know it's a regedit, but does
this open a new explorer shell to try to prevent a crash?

2) You can view Kelly's tweaks grouped by topic from a link at the bottom of
th page, but is there *a place on Kelly's site where you can you find a
quick context or explanation ot each tweak for this great, always increasing
list?* I can't always predict from the title what *every* tweak will do
(but can with most).

3) When I get a "sorry for the inconvenience but IE will close" dialogue
box, I have found that a high percent of the time --between 85%-90% I can
stop the crash from closing all open browser windows if there are not
several "not responding" in task manager's list by hitting the Windows Key
+E and opening Windows Explorer and minimizing it to the desktop before I
make the choice to "send info to MS" or not. Does anyone else find this
helpful and know why it seems to work so well? I also get more of these
if resources are nearly exhausted (a very large number of browser windows
open and a number of CPU intensive processes--many that have to be on).
Does this work because you're opening a new instance of explorer or "the
shell?"

4) What's the relationship of IE to "the shell?" What's the relationship of
Windows Explorer to "the shell?"

5) Is there a clear definition of "the shell?"

TIA,

Chad Harris

 

[David Candy]

1. No idea why it helps. It shouldn't matter. XP has a different registry entry for this feature (seperateprocess) which is set in Folder Options. It probably still works though.

2. Complain to her.

3. Registry entries need to be set to open new shells. As standard all explorer windows belong to one instance. All IE entries belong to one instance. It's expensive in memory to use one instance per window. Explorer optionally starts a second instance for all folder windows (the first being the Start menu, Taskbar and one view of the desktop (a folder view sized just bigger than the monitor without toolbars or menu bar)). This is so a crash in a window doesn't take down Start et al.

4. IE is a skeleton app that contains some of the menus. Explorer is the Taskbar and Start Menu and a skeleton app for the browsing of some of the namespace.

Web pages are displayed by shdocvw.dll (which handles everything in the web page part of IE) which uses mshtml.dll to display the formatting (mshtml doesn't know how to follow a link just to make it blue and underlined and tell it's boss app that it was clicked). Various namespace extension are built into shell32.dll (directory view, My Computer view, Recycle Bin view, etc).

Both the IE and Explorer apps can host any of the above. They will look the part (explorer will look like IE if browsing the web), IE will look like explorer if browsing the namespace. However IE knows nothing of Start Menu's or the Taskbar.

5 Shell is the part of the computer that interacts with the user but isn't a program, ie it's point is the interaction not producing a document.

 

[Kelly]

Great reply, David!!! Chad, ignore #2. )




1. No idea why it helps. It shouldn't matter. XP has a different registry
entry for this feature (seperateprocess) which is set in Folder Options. It
probably still works though.

2. Complain to her.

3. Registry entries need to be set to open new shells. As standard all
explorer windows belong to one instance. All IE entries belong to one
instance. It's expensive in memory to use one instance per window. Explorer
optionally starts a second instance for all folder windows (the first being
the Start menu, Taskbar and one view of the desktop (a folder view sized
just bigger than the monitor without toolbars or menu bar)). This is so a
crash in a window doesn't take down Start et al.

4. IE is a skeleton app that contains some of the menus. Explorer is the
Taskbar and Start Menu and a skeleton app for the browsing of some of the
namespace.

Web pages are displayed by shdocvw.dll (which handles everything in the web
page part of IE) which uses mshtml.dll to display the formatting (mshtml
doesn't know how to follow a link just to make it blue and underlined and
tell it's boss app that it was clicked). Various namespace extension are
built into shell32.dll (directory view, My Computer view, Recycle Bin view,
etc).

Both the IE and Explorer apps can host any of the above. They will look the
part (explorer will look like IE if browsing the web), IE will look like
explorer if browsing the namespace. However IE knows nothing of Start Menu's
or the Taskbar.

5 Shell is the part of the computer that interacts with the user but isn't a
program, ie it's point is the interaction not producing a document.