Help crashes on XP sp3 without C++ 2008

[Bob Muehl]

Inkscape 0.48.4r9939 portable download crashes when selecting Help - Inkscape Manual (or any other Help requiring the opening of a browser [either Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft IE]) and also crashes if opening a file created with Corel Draw v8.

Crash occurs after 'Inscape Manual' please wait box appears also after selecting a file to open, then the following box appears
"Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library, Runtime Error!, Program:...Inkscape.exe, This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information."

This crash occurs on many different computers of hardware types Intel Celeron(D) 3.2Ghz RAM 2.0GB, Intel Pentium(R)4 CPU 2.0GHz RAM 1.0GB, Intel Pentium(R)4 CPU 1.9GHz RAM 512MB, AMD Duron(tm) 1.8GHz RAM 1.0GB all having Windows XP Professional or Home Version 2002 Service Pack 3 installed with Firefox 19.0.2 and IE 8.0.6001.18702 Also all Windows Updates either High Priority or Optional are up to date except any of the .NET Framework 4, 3.5, 2.2, 1.1 software is not installed. No other software applications are installed except those from PortableApps.com

This crashing of Inkscape stops only if Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) or Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) is installed, if C++ 2008 is uninstalled then the crash reoccurs. If any other versions of Visual C++ (2005, 2005sp1, 2010, 2010sp1, 2010sp1mfc, 2012u1) Redistributable Package (x86) are installed then Inkscape still crashes.

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Possibly a duplicate of Bug #631281 "0.48 crashes (C++ Runtime Library) when using extensions".

[Simon Halsell (shalsell)]

This is happening to me as well, on two different computers. I installed Microsoft Visual C++ 2008, but it still crashes, seemingly without any sort of catalyst or trigger. No matter what I do, it crashes after about ten minutes of use. My laptop has an Intel Pentium(R) dual-core CPU with 2.2 GHz, and 4 GB of RAM, while my desktop has an Intel(R) Xeon CPU with 3.2 GHz and 2 GB of RAM. I am using Windows 7 on my laptop, and Windows XP on my desktop. I have Inkscape 0.48.1 and Inkscape 0.48.4.

These crashes are accompanied by massive amounts of memory usage (1,498 MB).

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Marking as duplicate of Bug #631281 "0.48 crashes (C++ Runtime Library) when using extensions".
Don't hesitate to comment if you think it's a different issue.