O.k., I'm back. This time though I discovered it's not the internet but IE7; absolutely can not make a connection to a web page but I can send and receive e-mails while this is going on. This time it was no different than before; I'm browsing through numerous web sites with no problems and excellent speed when the damn thing just quits loading new pages or refuses to connect to any links. Task Manager shows two instances of iexplorer which don't seem to be running as there is no cpu use, I am unable to end the process for those two, yet when I start a new instance of IE7 which still won't connect but at least I can end the process for it. It's like the last two links I hit and which would not open are stuck in task manager. There is no network activity of any kind and the only activity shown besides in services are task manager and system idle process; cpu usage is 2%. This can happen anytime and from any web page. I have not done it yet but restarting my system will cure the problem but I'll probably will sit and wait 5 or more minutes just for the restart/shutdown process to begin; boot up is less than a minute and every thing's back to normal until next time. Comments other than a 'switch to firefox' are welcome.

Check to see if there were any recent updates to IE7 on your machine if so then maybe try system restoring prior to any updates to see if that helps, if you are a diehard IE Lover then maybe download and use Beta IE8.

Other than that, its probably a corrupt IE and either a switch to a different browser or a reinstall of the OS would fix it.

Does IE fault out, if so post any errors/faults you get here that will help, also how old is the pc?

Windows updates are being done, diligently, don't see anything marked specifically as an update for IE7 though.

Just did a system restore a couple of weeks ago; problem was there before and persists now. A complete factory restore was done about one month after I got the system the end of March.

There are never any fault or error messages from IE7 itself and I can't find anything specifically referring to IE7 in Event Viewer.

Always thought this problem was connection related but as I already stated it's not; it seems to be all IE7. Vista itself works pretty good but when this happened last night it took a full ten minutes for it just to begin the log off process. Also, I've tried all add-ons, some add-ons and no add-ons in IE7.

It just did it again and this time with no add-ons. While it may occasionally happen by opening a new page or a link within a page it more often than not happens when I move back and forth and again between links on the same page; always am using the back arrow and always in tabbed browsing. The scenario was the same; the last attempt at doing whatever resulted in iexplorer being shown in task manager and I'm unable to end the process. Hit restart, wait 10 minutes for Vista to decide to begin logging off and after that it's all back to normal. BTW, there's no great amount of activity going on while it's trying to log off as I listen to my machine closely and I can't see any activity on the lights on the machine; Vista's just doing its thing, I guess.

No Vista isn't just doing it's thing, this isn't normal. Scan the PC completely for virsu's/spyware/malware and also set IE back to all factory default settings. Which you can do from the Tools menu -> internet options -> advanced tab -> reset internet explorer settings. Also on that same tab is restore advanced settings this might be helpful also.

Give these a shot.