Make Your PC Work Better

Prevent System Crashes

HINT: Always Shut Down Properly
Windows creates temporary files that need to be closed before you turn off your machine. If you just throw the switch, these files are left in limbo. Not only might you lose program data that has not been saved, but it's possible that badly written programs could be left in an unusable state.

Run IE in a Separate Process
If you're running Windows 98 or running IE4 under Windows 95, you may notice that sometimes IE can bring your whole system down if it crashes. This may occur because, if you installed the Windows Desktop Update (meaning that IE replaced your Windows shell with itself), then Windows Explorer is running in the same process as IE. If IE goes, so does your system.

To prevent this occurrence, you need to run IE in a separate process from Windows Explorer. Microsoft warns that this might decrease general performance, but your browser shouldn't crash your system as often, so we think this is a good trade-off.

Go into Internet Options (on the View menu in IE4 and under the Tools menu in IE5) and click on the Advanced tab. Scroll down the Browsing section. Select Browse in a New Process by clicking on the checkbox. Then click OK, close IE4, and restart it.

Find the Kernel of Truth in IE Crashes
Are you an Internet Explorer user? Have you ever seen the error message "IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module Kernel32.dll"?

One of the more likely reasons is that there is at least one dynamic link library (DLL), a type of program file, located on the desktop. If so, you probably can't see it, because by default, Windows won't show such files. To make them visible, open My Computer by double-clicking on it. Select the View menu, then either Options or Folder Options (depending on your version of Windows). On the View tab, you will find an option to "Show all files." Select it. After you click OK, you may see new files, some with a DLL extension. Give each file a different type of extension or move it.

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