IE hangs when accessing Address Bar

[Elie]

Hi.

When I open a IE page and try to access the address bar by clicking on its
dropdown button, the page will hang for a while and if I try to press
anything on the tool bar (ie Stop button), or try to close the window, i
will get a 'Not Responding' message. This problem only happens once on each
new page that is opened, then address bar operates normally.
I'm using XP Home edition and AFAIK(or at least Windows tells me), i have
all the latest updates for XP and IE.
Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Don Varnau]

Hi,
This might be an Autocomplete problem- a corrupt History folder or index.dat
file.

Login as another user with administrator privileges, or from the machine's
default administrator account (from safe mode) and delete the affected
History folder from Windows Explorer. A new folder will be created on
restart.

You would not be able to delete this History folder when logged in as
yourself- it's "In use." You should be able to delete it from the
Administrator account.

If this doesn't help, I would conduct a very thorough search for malware.

No one program can remove all malware. Start by downloading and running
CWShredder, Ad-aware and Spybot. Check for updates before running Ad-aware
or Spybot.
See: http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm
Also note the security tips and other important information on that page.

Additional information at:
The Parasite Fight http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm
More security tips at http://www.aumha.org/a/parasite.htm
Bugs, Glitches & Stuffups: http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/darnit.html
What you can do about spyware and other unwanted software:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/spywarewhat.mspx

If unsuccessful with those programs, you may have to post a HijackThis log
for analysis. Start at
http://forum.aumha.org/viewtopic.php?t=4075 Then go to
http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm Work through the preliminary cleaning
steps then post a HijackThis log to the forum at
http://forum.aumha.org/viewforum.php?f=30

Be patient. It's a busy forum.

HijackThis logs are also analyzed at these (and other) forums. Look for the
proper forum and an "Important- Read This First" message so that you follow
proper procedure.
http://castlecops.com/forums.html
http://tomcoyote.com/forums/
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/
http://forum.iamnotageek.com/index.php
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/index.php
http://forums.maddoktor2.com/index.php

Hope this helps,
Don
[MS MVP- IE/OE]