Fix: Browser closes while opening certain websites and pages

Since last few weeks my browsers, both IE and Firefox, started behaving strangely. Whenever I tried to open certain websites or if I tried to navigate directly to internal pages of certain websites, my browser window would close leaving me with no information on what made them close. I thought it would be worthwhile to make a post about it for those who are facing similar issues with their browsers and looking everywhere for a possible fix.

Problem: Browser windows, both Firefox and IE, would close when opening certain websites and pages.

Investigation: I initially thought that it could be due to some malware or a problem with Internet explorer itself. But when I tried to open a problem giving website in Firefox which was closing IE window, I realized it was something else. After doing lot of research on Internet, I came to a conclusion that this behavior was due to either a corrupt installation of Java or an outdated version of Java being the sole responsible piece of software on my system causing my browsers to crash.

Fix: All you need to do is to install the latest version of Java client from Sun Microsystem’s website and restart your browsers. I verified this fix to work on both my laptop and desktop. Here is the direct link to Java client for your systems.