Why does my computer only run it's applications on one user account?

I have a computer with two user accounts. One of them (the one I’m on now) will run every application (firefox, itunes etc) effectively but if I use the other user everything shuts down. For example, when I’m on google chrome after about 2 minutes of browsing the web it will shut down with the message: “Google chrome has crashed”. Same thing happens with Firefox and everything else I attempt to use. What is going on? ):