Windows 7 Unable to run IE, FF, and Chrome browsers...

[hikerguy]

My wife's computer has an issue that just started a week ago that's driving me nuts. The PC has been running Windows 7 Home Edition (64 bit) for over a year. She sat down to use her computer and tried to open IE (IE9). When she clicked on it, a window popped up that says "Internet explorer has stopped working". What's more troublesome is that NONE of the browsers on her PC worked (FF, Chrome, IE). They all give similar error messages and refuse to start.


A friend of mine tried all of the following with no luck (the PC rebooted after each of these tasks):


Removed Chrome and FF. No change.
ran Avast
ran Malwareybytes
ran Adaware
ran Microsoft Security Essentials
ran Miscrosof Saftey Scanner and it came up clean.
ran the Malicious Software tool
ran Ace Utilities
ran CCleaner
ran Spybot
ran tdsskiller
Ran scf /scannnow
Started IE with no add-ons.


Only Malwarebytes picked up anything (only 6 items were found, and all were deleted).


Uninstalled Java and Flash and re-installed. No change.
Uninstalled IE and re-installed. No change.


Ran Windows7 repair disk. Nothing detected.
Reset IE to its defaults. No change.


The kicker is that after all of this, I decided to install Opera and Safari and they work!! But the other three browsers still won't work!!!


Also, if I boot into Safe Mode, all browsers work (IE, FF, Chrome).


Any help would be MUCH appreciated. No changes were made to her computer prior to this happening. I really want to avoid re-installing Windows 7.


thanks,


Andy

 

[hikerguy]

Just got through going through the "upgrade again." This time I first tried increasing the System Volume to 1Gb. Crapped out again at 71%. Went back and gave the System Volume 80Gb and it died again!!! (again at 71%). WTH

This thing is killing me. I'll try the clean boot, but I don't think that's going to stop the issue with the bogus "not enough free space" message.

Thanks for all the input so far.

Andy

 

[hikerguy]

Well, I finally threw in the towel last night. Last thing I did was the clean boot and it made no difference. I couldn't dedicate any more time to it, so I just re-installed Windows. All is good now (although it is a headache reinstalling all the motherboard drivers, application software, and other data such as photos, music, etc.). But, at least now she has a clean PC and hopefully I won't see this problem again.

I REALLY appreciate all the help everyone has provided on this forum. Can't say we didn't try, right?

As a side note, if you're looking for an easy and powerful partitioning tool, check out EaseUS Partition Manager. It's FREE.
I used it several times and it's extremely easy to use and is reliable.

Free Partition Magic alternative & free Partition Manager Software for Windows PC, Workstation and Server - EaseUS.



Andy

 

[kurteb]

If you have a Seagate hard drive, you can do an overwrite of the drive, then install Windows 7 clean, with nothing on the drive, the above link with sp1 is your best option, of course. you can burn the .iso to a disc or usb and install from there - here is the SeaGate "Disc Wizard Starter Edition." It will write zero's to the entire drive, permanately deleting any previous data, as an option that will allow you to reinstall without sp1 windows 7: DiscWizard | Seagate
I use western digital myself, thier site is: Link Removed