Firefox and IE wont start what does this indicate?

[Prozac1964]

Hey everyone, been a little while. Anyway, I'm working on my nephew's toshiba laptop because this morning when he clicked on Firefox...it crashed. Then we tried IE and it crashed.

Seems to me that this is pointing toward a problem beyond the browsers. Anyway, just to see, I downloaded the latest version of Firefox put it on a usb stick and installed it. It crashed. Getting no love here.

What do the experts here at HF think the problem might be. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Prozac

PS: a little more info I did run Spybot S&D, no problems, and it did connect to the internet to update it's daily downloads...so we have a strong internet connection..the pc is 3 years old and has worked flawlessly up until now. Thanks again for any help

 

[Destonomos]

you have asploded the internet, which clearly seems to be the problem.

sorry, no fix

 

[gimp]

check event logs for the times you attempted to start the browser.
the apps crashing should show up in the Application event log, and may be able to help pinpoint the issue.

 

[Hallis]

And try setting the Internet Options advanced options back to default. And remove the checkbox to use 3rd party browser extensions.

Might help, might not, may just have to do a system restore back a few days to when it worked.

 

[dle1232003]

Could be a virus, try a different virus scanner, such as Avira, also as mentioned before check the application logs in event viewer to see if anything interested is listed. I had this problem on my dads computer, that firefox wouldnt respond nor start up (process didnt show in task manager), usually fixed by a quick reboot, other times it just took a while to open. Never did find a fix for it, my dad just stopped moaning about it not working