Lag in finishing to load pages

[Maggie]

Win98se - IE6; DSL
This problem began a few months ago with IE5.5 & has continued with IE6.
50% of the time, a portion (usually 99%) of a page will load in a flash but
the loading will then not finish, usually for anywhere from 30-120 seconds,
sometimes for several minutes.

Sometimes CTRL+ALT+DEL will result in an indication that the IE program is
not responding, sometimes not. When "not responding" IS the indication, it
will eventually start responding & finish loading - after the huge delay.
Sometimes while this semi-freeze is happening the bar at the bottom (what is
that called - Status bar?) will read "Done" & the loading bar graph will
have filled & disappeared. Sometimes during the semi-freeze, the bar will
read "Opening Pagexxxxxxxx" or "3 items remaining" & the loading bar graph
will barely crawl across the page or sit at 99% complete. There is no
seeming relevance to which site is being loaded. The same site will have
problems one time and none the next.

I've tried different things:

disabling Norton AV
repairing IE
rebooting
checking resources
refreshing (sometimes works as long as there is no "not responding" message)
disabling the Google Toolbar's Advanced Features

I can find no clues

Any suggestions much appreciated

 

[Maggie]

Many thanks for your suggestions, Lawrence.

I went to "View Objects" & one item is damaged, namely:

Java Runtime Environment 1.3.1
Type: Active X Control
Total Size: 0 bytes (none)
ID: {CAFEEFAC-0013-0001-0000-ABCDEFFEDCBA)
STATUS: DAMAGED
CODEBASE: http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.3.1/jinstal

I swallowed hard & deleted it, feeling somewhat less anxious since there was
a later version also in the Downloaded Program Files. I've since surfed to
several different sites without problem, although it's still early days.

Thanks again.