My problem is as follows: I get the following message when trying to print
some email messages using the Print or Print Preview key: “Internet Explorer
has stopped working. Windows will close the program and notify you if a
solution is available.” So what do I do?
In this excerpt from
Answercast #71, I look at a case where printing from Internet Explorer
causes the browser to crash.
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Can’t print
It’s very difficult to understand exactly where the problem might lie in
situations like this.
I understand your question; but given what’s going on here, there could be
so many different things at play that could cause Internet Explorer to
crash.
So I’m going to point you at a couple of articles and refresh on a couple
of points here about Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer add-ons
One of the biggest issues with the way Windows and Internet Explorer is
constructed is that since Internet Explorer allows you to put in other things,
other than from Microsoft (in other words, you can add add-ons, toolbars,
various types of functionality and so forth) …if they fail… when they fail,
it’s reported as an error in Internet Explorer because those things have been
incorporated into Internet Explorer, even though they were not
originally a part of Internet Explorer and they didn’t necessarily come from
Microsoft.
So one of the very first things I do in situations like this is I fire up
Internet Explorer’s add-on manager and disable all
of the add-ons you can. See if the problem goes away.
IE crashing
There’s another article I have called “IExplore.exe
has failed. What do I do?” that also covers the general case of Internet
Explorer crashing.
I’m going to point you there also as it also has a number of good tips for
things to look at: things to try and narrow down exactly what the problem might
be and what steps might make it go away.
Update drivers
Finally, it does have to be said that unfortunately both your video
display driver and your printer driver can come into play whenever you print.
It’s unfortunate but it’s just the way things are architected.
What I would recommend you do (if playing around with Internet Explorer
doesn’t solve the problem) is to consider updating your video and printer
drivers. Make sure you have the latest and greatest of all of those.
Try a different browser
Finally, you know, it’s worth trying a different browser. Grab a copy of
Google Chrome or Firefox. Download and install those and see if running with
those and printing from either of those will make this problem go away.
That too doesn’t tell you that it’s the browser’s fault – but it may
indicate that one of the add-ons in Internet Explorer (that isn’t in the other
browsers) may be at fault – or the add-ons are just written better for those
other browsers. Like I said, it gets kind of complex but that’s also something
else worth trying.
