Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Yahoo toolbar causing Internet Explorer 8.0 to crash

I had one of my users come and grab me saying that their Internet wasn't working. Anyone who has worked long enough with computers knows this can mean anything but since I was just using the Internet to pull up some information, so I knew it wasn't building wide.

 I followed her to her desk and she launched Internet Explorer 8. It opened and then instantly closed itself. Odd, I opened my self and it did the same thing but stayed open a little longer. I popped open task manger to ensure nothing funny was happening. Didn't see anything funny. I jumped into "Internet Options" and changed the home page to http://www.google.com/ since it is really basic and I thought maybe a page was causing the problem.

Opened IE again and this time it would stay open but the one tab kept crashing and the recovering the tab over and over again. I went ahead and went the through the same process as above and changed it to  a blank page then reopened IE. Same behavior.

I thought maybe it was possibly malware behavior but wasn't really sure. Fired up Process Explorer and Process Monitor by Sysinternals. Process Monitor didn't seem to show anything odd. I then went to Process Explorer thinking that now it was probably a dll loaded with IE with causing a problem. Went to properties, and then Threads for iexplorer. I noticed one of the dlls that was pretty active was yt.dll. I looked at the top of IE and noticed a toolbar, after searching to confirm my thoughts the dll belonged to the yahoo toolbar. I uninstalled the tool bar and reopened IE. It was working fine.

Not sure what changed that caused the sudden problem, no updates happened in that time frame but if you start to have the same problem hope this helps.

UPDATE - I am seeing alot of traffic on this post and from the comments we can tell it's happening to multiple people and it started today. I only had one user with the problem. I saw a yahoo question about this apparently with vista it will tell you that yahoo toolbar is the problem, which would have made the proble easier. My user had xp and it told me nothing other than crashing. I will be contacting yahoo, if they don't already know. Curious if it's a certain toolbar version.

UPDATE 2 - I did see that the following update got installed yesterday on the computer: KB2079403. You can read the following link by microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2079403 and it seems to apply to all versions of windows. Dark stated his had a similar issue but that he had no such updated, and the last update was 11/19. So furhter proof it's most likely not microsoft update.

Update 3 - It looks like probably the problem had to do with an older version of the toolbar. Most people don't update theirs. What caused it to break today is still a mystery.

FOR THOSE WANTING JUST THE FIX AND NOT THE STORY
-Just uninstall the Yahoo toolbar.
-Install the latest version of the toolbar if you still want it. (Latest version seems to be working)

25 comments:

  1. Hi there. Thank you for creating this blog post. I work for an IT firm which services over 100 small business clients. This morning my phone has been ringing nonstop due to users seeing exactly as you describe. So far I have found no correlation between the magical date of today and Yahoo! Toolbar suddenly deciding to go Kamikaze on everyone. I have seen the issue on IE6, 7, and 8 on Vista, Win2k, and XP.

    The solution at this time as I have relayed to my own organization is to nuke Yahoo! Toolbar from orbit, uninstalling it fully from Add/Remove programs.

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  2. We've also been getting calls all day in regards to this issue.

    We find that by resetting Internet Explorer to defaults fixes the problem quickly.

    Right click on Internet Explorer on the start menu and choose "Internet Properties".

    Click on the "Advanced" tab.

    Choose the "Reset..." button toward the bottom of the window.

    When the next window comes up, click "Reset" and let it complete.

    Open Internet Explorer and it should work fine now.

    Hope this helps.

    www.techtous.com

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  3. Yep, seeing this issue present itself repeatedly out of the blue today. Like what you saw in Process Explorer, a quick check of the AppLog shows that yt.dll is the crash culprit. Uninstalling the toolbar fixes it, and the issue doesn't re-present if the toolbar is reinstalled (so far).

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  4. We have the same issue, originally thought maybe a Microsoft update caused problem. But at this point we have computers that have problem and have not had an update. Removing Yahoo toolbar resolves. At this point I'm thinking the yahoo toolbar received an update overnight and is no longer functioning. But it would be nice to know the true cause without assuming, so if anyone pinpoints, please post.

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  5. Had two users with problems in IE, crashing every time they open it. Both resolved by removing Yahoo Toolbar. Thanks for this post!

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  6. Considering this is the day after patch Tuesday, it may well be an incompatibility introduced by a recent Microsoft update.

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  8. Getting the same issues here today. Work for a helpdesk and numerous people calling up with this same problem. We are doing an IE8 push and thought that might be the issue, but are getting calls from people that have IE6 or IE8. Uninstalling the Yahoo Toolbar clears up the issue.

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  9. Also I installed the latest bar on my computer for testing (I don't like browser add-ons) and am having no problem so I think for users wanting to could upgrade to the latest version and be fine. Anybody who can test this I would like to hear back from.

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  10. Ok bit of an update. Got another user with the same problem again. Sifted through the windowsupdate.log and did not see the KB2079403 update. Last update done on this machine was back on 11/19.

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  11. Tthanks. I was still thinking it wasn't a microsoft update but had to check.

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  12. I also work in desktop support and we've been seeing it too. I installed it and didn't have a problem. But multiple users at work and some personal friends are having the issue.

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  13. Hey I too installed the toolbar today and it didn't crash. Must be a problem with the older one, of course people who only use IE won't get the news since they can't open it :D

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  14. Sorry to keep flooding your Blog here, just keep getting more and more people with the problem. The last 3 people I have worked with, their yt.dll version was 2007.5.30.1

    Maybe its just a crazy old version out there causing the issues.

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  15. Not sure what is causing the issue, but I did the fix recommended in the second post and it resolved the issue. I work for an ISP and many customers today had this issue. Shows how good my ISP (They are not very Knology-able) is when they send us out for a PC issue.. Luckily this post helped me put some smiles on faces today.

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  16. Woke up this morning (Wednesday) and switched on to find IE crashing within seconds of opening on all machines.

    Firefox worked, so looked to see what was on IE which was not on Firefox, and decided to disable the Alexa Toolbar first (no difference) and then the Yahoo Toolbar.

    That solved the problem.

    Since then, have noticed a lot of posts suggesting that a number of Yahoo services are having problems today, but not clear if there is a connection.

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  17. yep same thing... had 3 users call yesterday all with diff. environments and removing yahoo toolbar fixed all of them!!!

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  18. All over my school district, but it isnt just the yahoo toolbar. I have had yahoo, something called babylon toolbar, ask, ond several others causing the same issue.My Answer; stop all toolbar installs (add-ons) and set an allow list in A.D.

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  19. I removed the toolbar and still can not get IE to display a webpage?

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  20. Hey mschantie, What is the behavior of your IE? If IE is staying open and the tab isn't crashing then It doesn't exhibit the same yahoo toolbar symptoms and we would need more informatin to find a solution.

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  21. I removed yahoo toolbar and the problem resolved. thank you so much!

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  22. i can't remove my yahoo toolbar ! I opened the add/remove programs and remove the yahoo toolbar but nothing's happening ! please help..

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  23. Hi, sorry to hear that. Here is a link to an article on how to start IE without toolbars or add-ons. It also shows to reset IE to remove them. Hope it helps:
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd364987.aspx

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