I have gone through nearly thirty builds of IE8 with ThinApp 4.6.1. I have built IE8 on XP Pro SP2, XP Pro SP3, and Vista Busines 32-bit. I have even gone so far as to try radical things, like moving c:\program files\internet explorer to a folder off the root of the C:\ drive, changing file permissions and updating registry entries, in an attempt to solve the issues we are seeing. I even tried building it using Vista SP2 as a base, then capturing the IE8 updates on Win7 and applied the changed files and built each one of those. Last but not least, I replaced all those files with files from Windows 2008. To say that I can be a little obsessive is an understatement.
I went through all of those builds because two of my testers were seeing constant, instantaneous crashes when attempting to use virtual IE8. I could not make the browser crash (with very few and obscure exceptions), and had an epiphany. My laptop, my VM's and other testers, did not have systems with discreet Nvidia graphics. The machines that were seeing constant crashing are Dell Precision M 6400/6500's with Nvidia QuadroFX 2700M/2800M graphics cards.
Yesterday I worked with a clean piece of hardware that had nothing but Vista Business 32-bit, all the Windows Updates (with the exception of IE8), and the hardware drivers. I installed ThinApp on the machine and captured the installation of IE8 and its updates. I built IE8, went to a page with Flash, and saw an instant crash on ntdll.dll.
I had the hunch regarding the Nvidia driver for some time, so I needed this hardware machine at my disposal in order to conduct the tests. I was hoping by building on the offending hardware I might get a funstional build, but instead I saw the same crashes. I decided to remove the Dell Nvidia driver and reboot. Guess what? Far fewer Flash-related crashes. In fact, the only Flash I was able to make it crash on was on the new CNN Beta video page. I installed the most recent driver from Nvidia, rebooted, and the instantaneous crashes reappeared. I removed the Nvidia driver, rebooted, and 90% of the crashes went away. I was able to perform this operation over and over with the same results every time.
While this thread may be primarily devoted to View issues, I thought that someone out there might benefit from the knowledge that Flash, Nvidia hardware with Nvidia drivers, and ThinApp 4.6.1 are not yet playing nicely together.
Toby Fruth, Sr. Specialist, The Parsons Corporation
