If you use Internet Explorer as your browser and have the Active Desktop feature enabled, you may have noticed an unhappy connection: when your browser crashes, the Active Desktop often shuts down and Windows itself may freeze. To keep your browser from taking your desktop down with it when it crashes, try this: in IE, choose View-Internet Options. Click the Advanced tab and check Browse in a new process. Click OK, exit, and restart IE. Besides reducing screen redraw distortions, this option lets you exit your browser the next time it crashes without having to restart Windows or log off and on.

Note: when IE runs in a separate process, it consumes more resources and may reduce overall performance. So try this setup for a few weeks, then decide which benefit you need more: quick crash recovery or improved performance.