Browser problem: endless loading time

[The Wizard]

Before I start, the following problem affects Firefox as much as it does IE7/8. In fact, Firefox gets it sooner than IE8, which is the main reason I still use the latter.

Anyhow, I'm having the following problem and have been having it for a while now. I'm browsing the Internet for a certain amount of time, anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours. Suddenly, my browser will be loading a page, yet never succeed in actually loading it fully. I can wait for hours, and I bet it will still be loading. While loading, it says "Waiting for page..." like during the regular process, but never gets past that.

I have had this problem for a year or two now, but for most of that time it was relatively innocent and could be solved simply by closing the browser and re-opening it. However, somewhere in the beginning of last year, it got a lot more annoying. Closing it no longer solves the problem, for once re-opened the browser is stuck continually trying to load my homepage, once again with the "Waiting for page..." bit in the status bar. It's not like the whole program is frozen; I can still close the window.

The problem lies with the process, I think. I've tried using ctrl+alt+del to end the process, yet it's impossible. The Task Manager is unable to end the IExplorer.exe process (or the Firefox.exe process, for that matter). As an aside, the amount of memory being used by the processes once they freeze like this is large (>15 kB). The only thing that works now is to restart my whole system, and once the process is frozen, shutting down the computer can take up to 15 minutes.

It's very frustrating. I've searched for viruses and spyware with a variety of software (avast!, adAware, Spybot S&D, etc.), but nothing turned up. De-installing IE8 didn't work either. Do you guys know anything?

[pevergreen]

Windows XP Service Pack 3?

Is it happening on another computer on that net connection (if there is one?)

[The Wizard]

Oh, sorry: no, it's Windows Vista SP2. And I have not experienced the problem on my netbook (operating on XP SP3), using Firefox. I don't know about my mother (who is also on the connection), though...

I am connected to the Internet via a wireless router.

[pevergreen]

(just to further clarify)

The router has a landline connection, but is wireless enabled, its not a router with a dongle plugged in?

[The Wizard]

Not entirely sure what you mean, but I assume it's the following: we use it to recieve wirelessly what we would otherwise need cables for. It's plugged into a cable modem.

[pevergreen]

Routers exist like this:


You plug a wireless dongle into it, then it sends out wireless to computers.

You've just got a wireless router, your net connection comes from the street.


Does where you are in relation to the router have any effect?

[The Wizard]

I have this router:



It gets its signal from this modem:



And that thing is plugged into the network itself. I receive the wireless signal via a USB stick.

I really doubt it's the router or the Internet though, seeing as on my netbook the problem doesn't exist.

To answer your question though, I don't think that can be a solution since the problem takes place on a desktop.

[Fragony]

Try booting it up in safe mode with network, you will at least be able to use everything vital. I don't know how long you have been using USB stick connect, but it doesn't work all that well and sometimes completely dies.

[The Wizard]

Tell me about it. But you think the problem lies in the wireless signal receiver?

Here's a screenshot of what happens, by the way:

[Sevis]

I wouldn't blame your browser, seeing as they both fail. Can you ping the router while this happens? What about other programs, does MSN/etc. work fine?

I'm not sure if wget is available for Windows, but if it is, try that, too - it also uses HTTP, so if the problem is protocol-specific, it'll (hopefully) detect it.

[The Wizard]

What is wget and what does it do? And how would one ping his own router?

And yes, other programs using the Internet (mIRC, Last.fm) continue functioning perfectly. Interestingly enough, muTorrent also freezes up the moment my browser's process freezes up.

What puzzles me is it isn't just IE7/8... Firefox and Chrome get it too. e_e

[Tellos Athenaios]

Wget is a download program that doesn't just give up at the first network problem (it can reconnect and resume broken downloads for instance). There is a windows version, it is used for instance in the windows version of Jigdo.

You would want to try it like this:

wget -c "http://domain/path/to/download/file" -O NUL

Or:

wget /c "http://domain/path/to/download/file" /O NUL

That command attempts to download the file given after -c and sends it to the NULL device (on DOS/NT aka “Windows”). Any errors found in the output on the cmd/shell will help ‘debug’ your problem.

(Note: I do not know whether or not the Windows version of wget uses the DOS style /flag instead of the Unix style -flag for passing parameters/options.)

Ping is a tool to check if routers/servers are ‘online’ and responsive: no need to download anything, simply use:

ping address

From the command line; let it run a while then type Ctrl C to stop it: it should list how successful it has been at contacting <address> (number of packets dropped / number of packets sent) as well as how much time it took (latency) to contact <address> on average.

[The Wizard]

I think I may have found the problem... my anti-virus software's (avast! 4.8) web scanning module. I turned it off yesterday evening after reading about similar problems with McAfee's SiteAware and AVG's web scanner and have as of yet not encountered any freezes since. I'll continue doing so today to see if this situation persists.

I'm thinking it may either be the module itself or a conflict between it and my firewall (ZoneAlarm), because in ZA Program Control I saw that the web scanning thing wasn't completely OK'd by the firewall (it still had to ask me for permission upon trying to access the trusted zone).