iedw.exe : Application Failed To Initialize Error. How To Solve it?

Many of us may have faced this problem with Internet Explorer atleast once that whenever we open some website, there is an error like :

iedw.exe Application Error – idew.exe failed to initialize

dcownin.exe application error

These errors are a result of improper function of Internet Explorer Add- On Crash Detection. This kind of error generally appears with the IE 6 and with Windows XP SP2. There could be several possible reasons for this error.

Reason 1 :

One of the most common reason for iedw.exe Application Error is some problem with RAM or Virtual memory. This add-on crash detection uses some of the RAM or Virtual memory area. If the RAM is faulty or the Virtual memory area on the hard disk is not fine or fast enough, the initialization of this idew.exe component fails.

Solution :

For Memory or RAM issues, I recommend all to use the Memory Diagnostic Tool to check the health of the RAM. For Virtual Memory area, you should run a Hard Disk Diagnostic Test to check whether the hard disk is in good health or not. If the hard disk is in bad health, the virtual memory area becomes slow or corrupt which may be the cause of idew.exe application error.

Reason 2 :

Another reason might be the idew.exe corrupted somehow. A Corrupt application has high tendency to create application error when it run.

Solution :

If the memory and hard disk diagnostic tests come out fine, the next possibility is the corrupted of add-on crash detection. This corruption can be the result of hard disk bad-sector, malicious script of some virus infection. First of all, run a full computer virus scan with any good anti-virus. After this if the problem is not solved, you can simply disable this feature of Add-On crash detection by following the instructions HERE. But turning of crash detection may interfere with other kind of error detection as well, so I don’t recommend it. Instead, see the next solution related to the IE version.

Reason 3 :

All of the internet browsers, including the Internet Explorer have some problems in them, the problems are fixed from time to time and new versions are released. If you are facing the idew.exe problem, you might most probably be using Internet Explorer version 6, in which this problem is mostly observed.

Solution :

There has been certain problems and safety issues with Internet Explorer which have been fixed and removed in the following version. I strongly recommend that you update the Internet Explorer to the latest available released version from Microsoft. You can download Microsoft Internet Explorer HERE.

Alternatively, you can try your hands on some other web-browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera Browser if you are comfortable with trying out some other Web-Browsers.