IE instability

[Guest]

I am running IE 6.0 on XP Home SP2. It is acting very erratically. It will
freeze on an attempt to connect to the Internet. 10 minutes later, it will
be fine. A day or two after that, it will again freeze. This has been
happening, at odd times and in no pattern for the last 2-3 weeks. Rebooting
does seem to clear it up, but I hate to be constantly rebooting my PC. All
my AV, antiSpyware, antiAdware is up to date and keeping me clear of malware.
Windows security updates are also up to date. I am unable to find any
reason, or consistency in IE's operation. Does anyone have any thoughts?

John

 

[Jon Kennedy]

First thing to try would be to clear your temporary internet files:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm
If no joy by using the IE interface, go with the manual file deletion
instructions on that page, or use the CCleaner freeware program or Microsoft
app mentioned/linked.

 

[Guest]

None of this made any difference (I had been regularly deleting cookies,
temporary files - I even ran a hard drive scan to search for errors, to no
avail). IE froze again 30 minutes ago, and required a reboot. Now it is
working fine. I'm still puzzled.

 

[Guest]

I also verified that the problem is not with my cable internet connection,
because other programs are successfully accessing the internet, even when IE
is frozen.

 

[Jon Kennedy]

This may be caused by spyware/malware that's gotten installed on
your system. Use Ad-Aware, Windows Defender and/or Spybot Search & Destroy
to remove it.

Windows Defender
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Good sites on how to install and use Spybot -
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/tutorial/index.html
http://tomcoyote.com/SPYBOT/index1.php

Also download a winsock repair tool, to have just in case cleaning up
anything found breaks it -

Winsock repair tools:
LSPFix- all versions of Windows http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.zip
LavaSoft- all versions of Windows-
http://digital-solutions.co.uk/lavasoft/whndnfix.zip

Running one of the above may also fix your problem.

More information here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/tshoot.html
http://spywarewarrior.com/sww-help.htm

If no joy, in IE go to Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Browsing
section, uncheck "Enable third-party browser extensions", click Apply, click
Okay, reboot. If that solves your problem, then more troubleshooting is
needed to find out exactly which program, or Browser Helper Object (BHO) is
causing this problem. Tools...Manage Add-ons and disable a couple at a
time.
More info:

How to manage Internet Explorer add-ons in Windows XP Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883256

If all the above fails, then the problem could be something new that the
spyware cleaners above don't have in their databases yet. In that case....
HijackThis direct download:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip
Tutorial on how to use HijackThis:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/htlogtutorial.html
Then post it's output log to the forum here for analysis and feedback by the
parasite experts:
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/
http://aumha.net/viewforum.php?f=30
Or one of the other HijackThis Logs forums listed here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/forums.html

Or try this program to get some of the most nasty malware:
CWShredder direct download:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cwshredder.zip

An alternate resource for all of this and more:
http://www.aumha.org/secure.htm

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM]

I also verified that the problem is not with my cable internet connection,
because other programs are successfully accessing the internet, even when
IE
is frozen.

Do a thorough check for malware following all of the steps at one of these
sites:
Help with malware
All MS-MVP Sites.
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm
http://aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/darnit.html
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k/Malware_Defence.htm

Unexplained computer behavior may be caused by deceptive software.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827315

So How Did I Get Infected Anyway?
For quite a few people it's by installing Messenger Plus, whose ads for
malware don't identify the malware as such and try to convince you that you
owe it to the author. See also:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=27971
Don't ever do a "default" install of anything. Always choose Custom and see
what else is being carried along. Don't install any extras you're not sure
of.