At home I have 4 computers running; two have XP as operating system, two Vista. The "Browser stops problem" only occurs on the two Vista laptops, not on the XP laptop and XP desktop. Problems have started since an automatic Vista update about a week ago. What all four computers have in common is the network adapter, all run Avast AV and have Zone Alarm as Firewall. Problems occur with all browsers, Firefox, IE7 and Chrome.
On one of the VISTA laptops (an Asus F3S, CPU Duo T7500, 3GB memory, Vista Premium) I completely uninstalled ZA and reinstalled it, at first the problem seemed to have disappeared, but ... unfortunately, it hasn't. Firefox hanged again, and like one of the previous posts, I had three firefox processes running and could kill only two (and could not restart Firefox). FTP and other internet services remain available, occasionally I can still start and use Chrome, but most of the times I cannot.
Just thought I'd share this with you all, as there is quite some overlap in problems, and I really would like to have a normal internet connection again!
Ah, sure, I guess the problem was in the combination ZoneAlarm-Vista. I added Avast because Superbill mentioned that running Avast & Zone Alarm can cause conflicts, and I used both.dw127,
It also stops working even if you do not use, or have never used, Avast anti virus!
I have experience this same problem (Browsers stop working) with both Firefox 3.0.8 and IE 7 (am about to upgrade to IE 8).
I have a Toshiba Satellite A305D-S6848 with Vista Home Premium. I use Zone Alarm free edition firewall and AVG 8.5 free edition antivirus. Nothing seems to cure this problem except a reboot.
I will uninstall Zone Alarm and try another firewall and see if that helps. I had problems with Zone Alarm working properly with my desktop (HP Media Center with Vista Home Premium) and uninstalled the Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm worked fine with my laptop until the past three or four weeks.
FYI...never used AVAST. Always used AVG for antivirus on both laptop and desktop. Recently updated AVG from 8.0 to 8.5. Not sure if this started the problem or not.
Jim
Un-installing ZA also worked for me. However this does not solve the problem. ZA worked fine until an automatic windows update was downloaded and installed. It appears from the letters to this forum, and other forums, that the problem can be traced to a particular windows update. It is time that Microsoft tried to sort this problem out - it has caused a lot of frustration!!!
Celestra, the problem is not only mine, but tens of thousands of others as well - probably a lot more than that!!! I'm fairly tech savvy. There are a number of forums currently discussing this issue, so it is widespread, and is affected by more than one program. In my case Zone Alarm.