how to fix Safari for Windows crash on startup launch
It took me a little while to figure this out – uninstalling it and deleting settings and reinstall did not solve the Safari crash on start-up.
So I noticed in the readme.txt it says that it will use the plugins from the firefox plugin folder – so I started to guess there was a plugin there it didn’t like. So I renamed \firefox\plugins to \firefox\plugins.bad temporarily.
Then Safari worked!
So I changed the home page to blank on Safari, closed it, renamed the firefox plugins folder back, and now both safari and firefox will start just fine.
ps. the newest safari for windows is hidden at developer.apple.com
You have to go through the menus to get it. But it still doesn’t fix this problem until you disable the plugin folder temporarily
_ck_ says... 
great , thanks
i was too annoyed for last 3 days as i could not check webpages i was making
thanks again
August 4, 2009 at 3:30 pm
This worked!
Thanks man, I was able to rename it back to “plugins” after starting safari once.
August 20, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Safari 4.02 still crashes for me, no matter what.
Following a Windows update n my XP Home SP3 machine a couple weks ago, I tried to launch Safari. Windows “configured Safari” for a minute, and then hoorray, Safari worked properly for the first time ever.
Microsoft may have found out they had done something correctly. Following the latest update last night, which installed IE8, the crashes came back. Renaming the FF Plugins directory didn’t help. Removing the Plugins Safari folder brought the “Configuring Safari” box bavk (fleeting hope), and Sfari crashed again. Clicking on “Déboguage” (debugging in french) didn’t bring anything up.
Is there a way for the Safari browser to work under Windows?
CChris
August 22, 2009 at 11:25 am
After installing the latest as of (Oct. 2010) Safari 5 first on a Vista & then later on a Windows 7 machine (neither system has ever had Safari installed) but all have IE8, latest Firefox & Google.
Instantly when trying to run Safari it crashed on both systems. I have been googling and found this page along with a few others. Very hard to find solutions specific to WINDOWS…
Anyway (i did not try the author of this articles suggestion) but I intend to. WHAT did get it to work was what I read on How to geek site. They suggested right clicking the Safari (exe) icon – BTW you have to do this to any icon you want to start safari with… and right click then –> select properties –> compatibility tab –> then select for it to run in XP SP2.
That’s all it took and I am writing this on the Windows 7 system via Safari 5. I am going to go try it on the Vista system in a few minutes.
October 27, 2010 at 2:02 am
I recently stumbled into this problem myself and have been looking for a fix; Bdubs’ solution of running Safari in Compatibility Mode worked like a charm. I can also report that I was able to get Safari to work not only in Windows XP SP2 and 3, but also in Windows Vista SP1, 2 and 3 modes.
March 25, 2011 at 5:44 pm
I’m running Windows 7 64 bit on a Dell laptop. Safari and Firefox have been installed and working fine until a few days ago, when Safari would not work – Windows message “Safari has stopped working”. I can NOT locate the folder: \firefox\plugins to rename it. I’ve changed Safari.exe to run in compatibility mode. That didn’t work. What am I missing? Where’s the “Plugins” folder?
Help!
June 22, 2011 at 10:17 pm
This was great news, Top$. I have been struggling with safari on by work pc for some time now. I haven’t installed firefox, but there was a firefox\plugin in the folder for lync. After I renamed the plugin folder it just runs like never before. Thanks very much for this great tip.
July 6, 2012 at 2:44 am