How to Fix Internet Explorer

How to Fix Internet Explorer Has Encountered
a Problem and Needs to Close


Have you ever been browsing the Internet using IE happily until all of a sudden you get this horrid “Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close” error message, after which IE completely shuts down and you lose all of your tabs along with any forms you might have been filling out? Now that I use Firefox religiously, this has not happened to be even once, but it happened all the time with Internet Explorer.
So for those poor souls still using IE 6 or 7, here’s a quick list of steps you can take to try and fix the underlying problem. The cause of this error can be any number of things, so you may have to try a few things before it actually fixes the problem. Your error may look something like this:

Error sign

AppName: iexplore.exe AppVer. 7.0.5730.11 ModName: unknown
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 61eb77e0


So what the heck to do if you get this error? Try each one of these steps and see if the problem goes away:
  • Open IE, go to Tools, Internet Options, and clear out the temporary Internet files. Click Delete All and choose the option to delete all offline content also. In case you downloaded some executable file that is causing the problem, this will remove it.
  • Run anti-spyware and anti-virus software on the computer. Download Adware and Spybot and run each to remove any malware. Also, download CCleaner and HiJackThis and run both applications. Remove unwanted entries that you see when you run HiJackThis (you’ll have to read the docs to know what to remove).
  • Go to Start, Run and then type in MSCONFIG. Click on the Startup tab and uncheck all items and then re-start the computer. This disables all startup programs from running. If you still get the error, go ahead and turn them back on the same way.
  • Disable Smarts Tags in Internet Explorer by going to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced tab, and then clearing the Enable Smart Tags check box.
  • Install the latest updates from Microsoft Update web site. If you started receiving this error AFTER installing the latest updates, you will have to perform a System Restore to the point before you installed the updates. You can access the System Restore feature by going to Start, All Programs, Accessories, and then System Tools.
  • Use System File Checker to scan for changes or modifications to Windows protected files. If any files were overwritten or deleted, etc, SFC will automatically retrieve the correct version of the file and replace it. You can run SFC by going to Start, and then Run, typing in CMD and then typing sfc /scannow in the command window.
  • Re-register Internet Explorer DLL files. Click on Start, then Run, type in CMD and then type the following lines and press Enter after each one:
    regsvr32 softpub.dll
    regsvr32 wintrust.dll
    regsvr32 initpki.dll
    regsvr32 dssenh.dll
    regsvr32 rsaenh.dll
    regsvr32 gpkcsp.dll
    regsvr32 sccbase.dll
    regsvr32 slbcsp.dll
    regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll
  • Disable all third party addons to Internet Explorer by going to Start, Control Panel, Internet Options, Advanced tab and then un-checking the “Enable third party browser extensions” check box. You will have to scroll down a couple of lines.
Hopefully if you’ve been getting this error, one of these methods mentioned above will fix the problem.