diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index ebf6ebd1be9df3..0823cdcbc6412a 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -6,11 +6,20 @@
 
                                   Changelog
 
+Daniel S (12 Nov 2007)
+- Bug report #1830637 (http://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1830637), which was
+  forwarded from the Gentoo bug tracker by Daniel Black and was originally
+  submitted by Robin Johnson, pointed out that libcurl would do bad memory
+  references when it failed and bailed out before the handler thing was
+  setup. My fix is not done like the provided patch does it, but instead I
+  make sure that there's never any chance for a NULL pointer in that struct
+  member.
+
 Daniel S (8 Nov 2007)
 - Bug report #1823487 (http://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1823487) pointed
   out that SFTP requests didn't use persistent connections. Neither did SCP
   ones.  I gave the SSH code a good beating and now both SCP and SFTP should
-  use persistent connections fine. I also did a bunch for indent changes as
+  use persistent connections fine. I also did a bunch of indent changes as
   well as a bug fix for the "keyboard interactive" auth.
 
 Dan F (6 Nov 2007)
diff --git a/RELEASE-NOTES b/RELEASE-NOTES
index f291ce4bffeee6..ffe2e44311d1c4 100644
--- a/RELEASE-NOTES
+++ b/RELEASE-NOTES
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ This release includes the following bugfixes:
  o free problem in the curl tool for users with empty home dir
  o curl.h version 7.17.1 problem when building C++ apps with MSVC
  o SFTP and SCP use persistent connections
+ o segfault on bad URL
 
 This release includes the following known bugs:
 
@@ -36,6 +37,7 @@ New curl mirrors:
 This release would not have looked like this without help, code, reports and
 advice from friends like these:
 
- Dan Fandrich, Gisle Vanem, Toby Peterson, Yang Tse
+ Dan Fandrich, Gisle Vanem, Toby Peterson, Yang Tse, Daniel Black,
+ Robin Johnson
  
         Thanks! (and sorry if I forgot to mention someone)
diff --git a/lib/url.c b/lib/url.c
index 93d3bad3409304..3897925a94a4bd 100644
--- a/lib/url.c
+++ b/lib/url.c
@@ -2134,7 +2134,7 @@ CURLcode Curl_disconnect(struct connectdata *conn)
     Curl_ntlm_cleanup(conn);
   }
 
-  if(conn->handler && conn->handler->disconnect)
+  if(conn->handler->disconnect)
     /* This is set if protocol-specific cleanups should be made */
     conn->handler->disconnect(conn);
 
@@ -2668,7 +2668,7 @@ int Curl_doing_getsock(struct connectdata *conn,
                        curl_socket_t *socks,
                        int numsocks)
 {
-  if(conn && conn->handler && conn->handler->doing_getsock)
+  if(conn && conn->handler->doing_getsock)
     return conn->handler->doing_getsock(conn, socks, numsocks);
   return GETSOCK_BLANK;
 }
@@ -2684,7 +2684,7 @@ CURLcode Curl_protocol_connecting(struct connectdata *conn,
 {
   CURLcode result=CURLE_OK;
 
-  if(conn && conn->handler && conn->handler->connecting) {
+  if(conn && conn->handler->connecting) {
     *done = FALSE;
     result = conn->handler->connecting(conn, done);
   }
@@ -2703,7 +2703,7 @@ CURLcode Curl_protocol_doing(struct connectdata *conn, bool *done)
 {
   CURLcode result=CURLE_OK;
 
-  if(conn && conn->handler && conn->handler->doing) {
+  if(conn && conn->handler->doing) {
     *done = FALSE;
     result = conn->handler->doing(conn, done);
   }
@@ -3111,8 +3111,9 @@ static CURLcode setup_connection_internals(struct SessionHandle *data,
       return CURLE_OK;
     }
 
-  /* Protocol not found in table. */
-  conn->handler = &Curl_handler_dummy;  /* Be sure we have a handler defined. */
+  /* Protocol not found in table, but we don't have to assign it to anything
+     since it is already assign to a dummy-struct in the CreateConnection()
+     struct when the connectdata struct is allocated. */
   failf(data, "Protocol %s not supported or disabled in " LIBCURL_NAME,
         conn->protostr);
   return CURLE_UNSUPPORTED_PROTOCOL;
@@ -3470,6 +3471,10 @@ static CURLcode CreateConnection(struct SessionHandle *data,
      any failure */
   *in_connect = conn;
 
+  conn->handler = &Curl_handler_dummy;  /* Be sure we have a handler defined
+                                           already from start to avoid NULL
+                                           situations and checks */
+
   /* and we setup a few fields in case we end up actually using this struct */
 
   conn->data = data; /* Setup the association between this connection