I'm using JRE 7 promoted b142 which contains the fix for 6998716.
The client vm still crashes but harder to reproduce as compared to a
build without the fix for 6998716.

On XP, the crash can be reproduced with the following applet.
http://sqeweb.sfbay.sun.com/deployment2/jitu/plug-bug/ALC/PrintThreadisActive.html


It seems the crash is easier to reproduce with FF 3.6 than with IE8 - I
haven't seen crash with IE8 so far.

Attaching the following:

1) new_client_crash.txt

collected by using the -XX:+ShowMessageBoxOnError vm option and making
sure the PATH env variable contains a path to a visual studio.
the non-debug version of awt.pdb is present in jre/bin directory

2) 2 hs err log files.

They both point to the same native call.
At the java level, it was trying to dispose the embedded frame.