Vista Browsers "Hang"

Hello all,

I'm finally waving the white flag and asking for help on a problem I'm having. I'm pretty savvy about this stuff, but now I'm just baffled.

I have Vista Home Premium 32b on an HP M7750n Pavilion (the OS was preloaded on purchase). 4GB RAM. My ISP is Comcast. I'm connected through a new Linksys/Cisco WRT310N wireless router, although my Vista box is connect via Cat5 (not wireless).

Here's the problem. My internet connection is good and fast, but my browser sporadically "hangs" loading a page. That is, the hourglass (spinner, whatever it's called now) just sits and spins, usually for around 2 minutes. Only does it occasionally - maybe once an hour. If I wait, it will eventually self-resolve. If I reboot the router, it's fixed. If I close and reopen the browser, it's fixed.

I primarily use IE7 (everything is up-to-date). When this happens, I launch Firefox, and see the same problem. However, in the process of my testing, I've done a send/receive in Outlook and that works fine, even though the browser(s) is "hung". I can also ping with no problem, even though the browser is hung. I can see other machines on my home network, as well.

When this occurs, I can go to my wireless laptop or my wired XP box, and they perform fine.

Here's what I've tried so far:

New Linksys router
New NIC (disabled the onboard nVidia nic)
New ethernet cables
Reset Winsock using netsh winsock reset
Reset the TCP/IP config using netsh int ip reset
Set up a static IP address for this box
Run IE with all add-ons disabled
Disabled Norton 360 firewall/autoprotect/phishing
Disabled Windows firewall/defender
Checked for updates for Vista, browsers, NIC drivers, etc
Disabled IPV6
Ran Spybot/AdAware/Malware checks
Used NU to optimize registry, deleted temp files, general system cleanup
Checked all the running processes during the "hang" - nothing suspicious there

I also tried yelling at it, but that didn't seem to do anything, either.

This problem hasn't occurred "forever" - I really started to notice it a couple months ago, but can't tie that to anything I've changed/installed.

So, here I sit. I can't really think of what to try next. I know it's not an IE problem, since FF has the same issue. And I know it's not Comcast or hardware between the Vista box & the wall, since my other machines work fine during the "hang" (and I've replaced the router/NIC/cables, anyway).

I'm not running anything especially elaborate on the box - mostly Photoshop/Zend/FTP/Outlook and the browser. No gaming, no P2P, nothing connected to NASA.

Like I said, I'm pretty savvy with this stuff, but I don't know what else to try, sort of a complete re-install, which just isn't practical.

Any suggestions? Apart from yelling at it some more?

Thanks!

the first thing i would do is check the linksys website for a firmware update. if its up to date, reset it to factory defaults. then reset internet explorer to defaults. i have included a link for troubleshooting, but if you have been going nuts over this, then you have probably seen it.

Troubleshoot Internet connection problems - Windows Vista Help

Thanks, I forgot to mention that I did a firmware upgrade on the router. I've tried so many things, I can't keep them all straight.

Seems to me that if the problem is on Firefox as well, resetting IE wouldn't make any difference.

And I have seen that link,thanks. My problem seems to be above all those suggestions. It's almost like something that allows the browser to communicate with Vista (or vice-versa) is breaking. When I posted my original message, it took about 2.5 minutes to "submit", but when I came to the forum just now, it popped right up.

Good job there on the troubleshooting Kevio! It helps others to help you when the problem description is clear and detailed.

My gut feeling is that you've still got some type of add-on which is interferring with browser operations, though it's not necessarily an "add-on" in the sense that it would show up in the browser's list. Despite their outwardly different appearances, IE and FF share virtually their entire code path down to the OS and the network stack, so if something is attempting to "inspect" or "optimise" HTTP operations it's not strange that both browsers would be affected.

A few more things you might want to try:

1) Run SFC /SCANNOW to repair any potentially damaged system files. It's the closest thing to an IE reinstallation, and FF is going to be using the same (damaged?) system binaries.

2) Boot to safe mode +net and use the PC long enough to determine whether the same symptom is occurring or not. Yes, it's painful, but it'll be useful to know whether safe mode makes a difference. If it does, utilities such as "Autoruns" (free from MS) can help you determine which of the components loading in normal mode might be responsible.

3) Uninstall all anti-virus, anti-malware, and non-default firewall utilities temporarily, long enough to see whether it makes any difference whatsoever to the problem. Merely disabling these things is not always enough because you're at the mercy of the app and its definition of what it means for it to be "disabled". There are plenty of instances where filter drivers are left active in the I/O chain even though the control applet ostensibly claims that the utility is "disabled".


Last resort...

4) If you have a server somewhere that can host a ~50MB file, you can generate a dump of the browser's memory space during one of these "hang" events and get someone to analyse the dump with a debugger to figure out what's triggering the wait. To generate the dump, use Task Manager. Just right-click the IE instance on the "Applications" tab (make sure it's the right IE instance!), and select "Create Dump File". The result will be a *.DMP file somewhere between 10 and 200MB in size, depending on what it was doing at the time. Those dumps compress very well so if you can upload it somewhere and paste a link here, I'll gladly take a look and I'm sure others will too