Explorer takes ages to load

[Guest]

Hi,

Running XP SP2, 3.4g processor, 2gb RAM.

For some reason when I load Internet Explorer it does not load for a long
time but I see it in the task manager processes. If I try to load it again I
see 2 iexplore.exe but 0 CPU activity for any of the process. If I then stop
the process with the lowest mem usage it usually loads immediately. I
initialy put this down to McAfee virus software because if I disabled it on
boot up there was no problem. So I have removed it, cleaned out the registry
and installed Norton same issues.

If I use Mozilla firefox it loads immediately but does on occasion stop with
the not responding error but if I leave it alone comes back. If I try to
complete on line form the cursor freezes but after a time it comes back and
what i keyed in when it froze shows on the form. This is happening with
Internet explorer, Outlook (sometimes) and firefox.

Hope there is enough here for some of you global geniuses .

Mick

 

[R. McCarty]

With the kind of hardware you have, I wouldn't expect any type of
lag in application startup times. However, moving from McAfee over
to Symantec didn't help your situation any. Both suffer from the same
ailments, too big, too slow and cause performance degradation. If
you care about performance as your specs would indicate, I would
get rid of Symantec/Norton as well.

I would recommend eTrust AV or AVG Free & Zone Alarm Free
for your Firewall needs.

This sounds suspiciously like Malware or Application hooks into IE.
What happens if you use the Administrator account ? Do you still
have the same type of issues ? You would probably benefit from a
few on-line scans for Pests, starting with Trend Micro's.
http://www.trendmicro.com/spyware-scan/

Also removing Symantec almost requires a CSI team. It's quite a job
to get Symantec/Norton off a PC.