nspluginviewer crashing

[dave111]

I'm new to Linux, just installed Mandrake 9.2 with KDE 3.1 (installed with Mozilla, without Gnome) at first seemed to work fine, but then Mozilla would close itself upon trying to load certain web pages. Konquerer will load them but returns a CrashHandler alert saying "nspluginviewer was crashing, causing a signal 11 error." Then certain parts of the KDE desktop disappeared, such as many of the options under Configuration, and certain desktop icons.

Strangely, this is the exact same installation of Mandrake I did a few days ago on an identical Maxtor hard drive. The only difference is that this drive is on a different IDE channel in the same machine, and is UDMA, which the other was not set up for. That installation never had these problems.

I'm perplexed how the exact same install off the same CDs could lead to such a different outcome. In fact, I reinstalled the whole drive and got the same problem a second time.

Can't find a reference to this nspluginviewer crash that quite fits mine. And can't explain the disappearance of much of KDE. The remaining parts seem to work okay.

System is 1.1 GHz Celeron, 256 MB, dual boot with W98, Award V6.0.

The answer might be obvious, but not to me. Can anyone point in the right direction?

[mdwatts]

Explainations on what can cause the signal 11 errors.

http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/

The most common is a bad memory module.

[dave111]

Thanks for the link. The article was very informative in a lot of ways. But none of those actions fixed the problem. Here's what I did:

Tried running with only one of the two 128 MB memory sticks, separately, and checked all the contacts.

Tried lowering the UDMA from 5 to 2, which is where it had been on the last install, when the error wasn't happening.

Turned off Irq unmasking.

CPU temp 80 F

Memory hole was already disabled.

Tried reinstalling Mandrake with a different CDROM.

Changed HD setting from LBA, which is where BIOS is autodetecting it, to CHS.

System and video BIOS shadow features were already off.

But none of these stopped the Signal 11 crashes.

The only difference I can think of between the successful install and this one is the location of the drive (installed first on IDE 1 Master, second install on IDE 0 Slave) and the UDMA setting, which had been set at UDMA 2 during the first install. The Master on IDE 0 is an identical Maxtor HD containing the MBR and W98, where it had been all along, though UDMA had been disabled inadvertently for an unknown length of time. It is now at UDMA 5 and running w98 fine.

I'd appreciate any more suggestions.

If needed:

IDE 0 Master -- Maxtor 30 GB, W98
Slave -- Maxtor 30 GB, Mandrake 9.2
IDE 1 Master -- CD R/W
Slave -- Iomega Zip
SCSI IDE 1 Master -- West Dig 40 GB, for backup W98
IDE 2 Master -- CDROM

Thanks.

[dave111]

BTW -- This is the trace from CrashHandler:

(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...0x41197656 in waitpid ()
from /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0
#0 0x41197656 in waitpid () from /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0
#1 0x4088733a in KCrash::defaultCrashHandler(int) ()
from /usr/lib/libkdecore.so.4
#2 0x4135fca8 in __libc_sigaction () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
#3 0x41720afc in PlatformBitBuffer::PlatformBitBuffer ()
from /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so
#4 0x41701024 in CorePlayer::UpdateBuffer ()
from /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so
#5 0x417009c2 in CorePlayer::DrawScreen ()
from /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so
#6 0x41759324 in PlatformPlayer::NsSetWindow ()
from /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so
#7 0x4175c502 in NPP_SetWindow ()
from /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so
#8 0x4175aa8b in Private_SetWindow ()
from /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so
#9 0x080566a0 in NSPluginInstance::NPSetWindow(_NPWindow*) ()
#10 0x08056457 in NSPluginInstance::setWindow(int) ()
#11 0x080568fa in NSPluginInstance::displayPlugin() ()
#12 0x0805d132 in NSPluginInstanceIface::process(QCString const&, QMemArray<char> const&, QCString&, QMemArray<char>&) ()