Steps:
1) enable Java console via the java control panel
2) run the Fish.html sample (the one with preloader) in IE8
    You should see 2 java console windows.
    One of them will stop updating at some point.
3) close the java console window which doesn't output any trace statements by clicking on the 'x' at the upper right.
4) you should see an error box indicating an access violation with info. on process id and thread id.

I used visual studio to attach to the crashing java.exe process and eventually triggered a hs err log but couldn't get native call stack. From the hs err log, the crash is in mat.dll.