Hello Guys,
Need some help on this. I have been using FFP since v2.0.0.2 and have no problems with it, but now that I updated to v2.0.0.12 my PC restarts when attempting to run FFP or even ThunderBird portable from the USB drive. This never happened before on my Win2K machines, only recently. The other Portable Apps installed seem to work normally.
I've done some tests to isolate the cause:
1) Re-formatted the USB drive and re-installed fresh copies of FFP and TBP.
2) Used several PCs (different configurations) to test
3) Used USB hubs (powered and non-powered) to test
4) Tried other USB flash drives containing the same version of FFP and TBP software
but none of the above proved useful. The computers running Win2K SP4 restarted everytime while loading up FFP or TBP.
To my surprise, running FFP & TBP v2.0.0.12 on several XP Pro machines proved to be problem free(same USB drives used)!
Can anyone tell me what's the deal? Thanks! 
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This is nearly always the result of a buggy driver... usually the video card driver. I remember there were some buggy ATI drivers that used to do this with Firefox a while back. I think they were built-in laptop cards. I'd say try updating your drivers, make sure the PC is virus and spyware free, etc. as a first step.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks for the quick response John.
I'm using computers with nVidia and S3Graphics video hardware, so it's probably not the video drivers at this point.
The thing is, the previous portable versions worked ok on these same computers. I've already checked the machines for spyware/viruses/malware as well, but come up negative.
Maybe I'll try installing the older versions to test if the problem goes away.
By the way, I want to personally thank you for making these portable apps accessible to everyone. They are a great help to the community, at least in my opinion.
I did these last night:
1) Installed FFP & TBP v2.0.0.5 & 6 but got the same results.
2) Tried running these versions in -safe-mode but still the PC restarted while the programs loaded.
3) I installed all the way down to v1.5.0.10 and finally managed to run FFP successfully in -safe-mode. However, the computer still restarted when I run in FFP normal mode.
Looks like the problem is somewhere else? This is driving me nuts. The computers are same as before, software is same as before, flash drives are same, etc., but I can't run FFP or TBP on Win2K Pro for some reason(s). Running on WinXP still works fine.
install Firefox to the Win2000 PC and see whether that works?
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Do you mean the "regular" versions of Firefox or ThunderBird? I have them on all my machines and they work ok.
Anyway, after days of troubleshooting, I think I have isolated the cause of the problem already: Norton Anti-Virus. I run NAV2002 on some machines I have here and everything is updated to latest versions via LiveUpdate. Funny thing is, all my Win2k Pro SP4 machines running NAV2002 do a cold restart when I attempt to run FFP or TBP, but the same does not happen on my WinXP Pro SP1/SP2 machines running NAV2002.
If I disable NAV2002 and then run FFP or TBP, everything runs normal as it should. As I've mentioned previously, these same machines were able to run FFP or TBP even with NAV2002 running in the background. I suspect that the latest virus definitions may have something to do with the sudden restarts. I'll have to observe if future updates to NAV2002 fix this.