Skype Add-ons Crash Internet Explorer

After installing several software packages on a new Vista PC, Internet Explorer started crashing every time an IE window was closed.

Unfortunately, I’d just installed many different packages and made a lot of changes, so it wasn’t easy to work out what could be causing it.

To make matters worse, I had changed the browser configuration and installed a LAN printer driver.

So for the next 2 days, I persevered with it. Then I switched to Firefox and made it my default browser. There wasn’t a problem with Firefox. But some things work better in IE, so there were times I really needed it. I discovered that, not only did it crash when I closed a browser, it would sometimes take other open IE windows down with it.

A search for information about Internet Eexplorer crashing didn’t turn up anything useful, so I thought it must just be something I did.

After putting up with it’s weird action for several more days, I decided I had to get to the bottom of the problem, because it was wasting time.

First I removed all the toolbars, but that had no effect. Then I noticed there were new, very small items on the standard IE toolbar – Yahoo Services, Skype, and Research.

I had already been through all of the standard menus and noticed there were some new options, so when I saw those buttons, I went straight to Tools->Manage Add-ons and then “Enable or disable add-ons.” There, I found two Skype entries and disabled them, saved the settings and closed the browser. It crashed, as I expected it would, restarted it, closed it again and thankfully, it didn’t crash.

So I tried that several times, and each time, it was perfect – back to normal. Then I searched for “Skype crashes IE7.” It seems I wasn’t the only one experiencing this problem – there were 23,000 results – but I had to have known it was Skype causing it to have found that information.

This problem has been around for a long time. I see complaints in forums when Skype was version 3.0 – mine is 3.6. You just can’t trust programmers – and I should know!

Life is good again, now I can get my Google toolbar back. I’m happy now, except that I wasted so much time over a small problem.

Alan Gray is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of NewsBlaze Daily News and other online newspapers. He prefers to edit, rather than write, but sometimes an issue rears it’s head and makes him start hammering away on the keyboard.

Content Expertise

Alan has been on the internet since it first started. He loves to use his expertise in content and digital marketing to help businesses grow, through managed content services. After living in the United States for 15 years, he is now in South Australia. To learn more about how Alan can help you with content marketing and managed content services, contact him by email.

Technical Expertise

Alan is also a techie. His father was a British soldier in the 4th Indian Division in WWII, with Sikhs and Gurkhas. He was a sergeant in signals and after that, he was a printer who typeset magazines and books on his linotype machine. Those skills were passed on to Alan and his brothers, who all worked for Telecom Australia, on more advanced signals (communications). After studying electronics, communications, and computing at college, and building and repairing all kinds of electronics, Alan switched to programming and team building and management.

He has a fascination with shooting video footage and video editing, so watch out if he points his Canon 7d in your direction.