Re: Netscape Freezes

Nancy Jentzsch (jentzsch@csn.net)
Sun, 7 Jul 1996 11:42:04 EDT

>Tobin, the same thing often happens to me with Netscape on my Mac at home
>-- I have to quit my ppp program (internet dialer) and then reconnect to
>use Netscape again. A nuisance. When using Trumpet Winsock (the
>equivalent to Mac's ppp program) and Netscape on the PC at school, the
>students and I quit and restart Netscape numerous times while Trumpet
>Winsock stays up and running.
>
>Restarting . . . ! It seems excessive to have to restart the computer to
>get Netscape to work again. However, when the machine freezes, there's no
>choice if you want to get back on the Web.
>
>Apple didn't have any suggestions as to the extensions to try? As I said
>in another message, is this where Conflict Catcher would be helpful? I
>suppose I could spend part of my summer performing the extension
>elimination/identification test to see if extensions are causing the
>problem.

I don't know whether this will help, but.... First be sure to get the most
recent version of Netscape 2.x (I think it is 2.2), then on any of the big
ftp sites (Info-Mac, UMich, etc.) you will find an extension called
Netscape Defrost. This will 'unfreeze' Netscape when it does freeze.
Evidently the problem is in the programming done by Netscape's programmers.

Conflict Catcher is an enormous help in finding those extension conflicts,
but in case my experience will help someone else....I'd like to share my
recent experience with Netscape 3.0b4 (the newest beta release).

I had downloaded and installed this version of Netscape. As an
obsessive/compulsive when it comes to computers, I also downloaded all the
"Plug-ins" I could find. Netscape ran fine on the first 'go-round'. If I
tried to restart it after that, it abruptly quit when reading the
Preferences file. If I trashed the Netscape Preferences, it would start up
just find. I ran Conflict Catcher, but no matter what was on/off the
problem remained. I finally started testing the Plug-ins one at a time and
found that I had unwittingly put a "Power-Mac only" plug-in in the folder
(I am on a Quadra 660AV). That solved the problem. The moral of the story
is to check plug-ins as well as extensions....Conflict Catcher doesn't deal
with these. There is a new shareware application called Plug-in Manager
that does much the same job as the Extension Manager does for extensions!

Hope this helps someone.

Nancy Jentzsch
jentzsch@csn.net
District Technology Resource Teacher
Pueblo School District No. 60
Pueblo, Colorado