IE slow to startup: some clues!

[Guest]

I'm having problems with IE6 taking 30+ seconds to load, even with my start
page set to about:blank. This only happens when my network connection is ON;
with the network connection disabled, IE starts up quickly.

I ran Depends (from dependencyWalker.com) and Profiled Iexplore.exe as it
started.
This showed each DLL that was loaded, and isolated the DLL(s) that caused
the delay. Here is a section of the Profile output showing the delay:

00:00:09.078: DllMain(0x77C70000, DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH, 0x00000000) in
"c:\windows\system32\MSV1_0.DLL" returned 1 (0x1).
00:00:09.078: LoadLibraryW("C:\WINDOWS\system32\msv1_0.dll") returned
0x77C70000.
00:01:22.156: GetProcAddress(0x77C70000 [c:\windows\system32\MSV1_0.DLL],
"SpUserModeInitialize") called from "c:\windows\system32\SECUR32.DLL" at
address 0x77FE374C and returned 0x77C76B74.
00:01:22.156: LoadLibraryA("NETAPI32.dll") called from
"c:\windows\system32\RASAPI32.DLL" at address 0x76EE2B65.

The numbers at the beginning of the lines are the TIME since the Profile run
began. Notice the LONG pause between 00:00:09.078: and 00:01:22.156:.
Also notice that the pause appears to be during the call to
"SpUserModeInitialize".
I am suspecting that this is due to something related to Security, possibly
with the system looking for credentials.
The entire Depends Profile output is at:
http://home.houston.rr.com/cliftnorris/bs252/IE_profiled_with_Depends.txt

Does anyone have any ideas why this call to "SpUserModeInitialize" is taking
1 minute and 13 seconds? Do you think I am going in the right direction
thinking this is "security related".
Any other ideas?

Thanks,
-Clift Norris

 

[news.microsoft.com]

hi,

We are facing slow startup of IE though i am not sure if our problems are
related.. I am sure it is after one of the security patches that it has
become slow...
If anybody finds our how to solve the problem please let me know

bye
Abhilash

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

I'm having problems with IE6 taking 30+ seconds to load, even with my start
page set to about:blank. This only happens when my network connection is ON;
with the network connection disabled, IE starts up quickly.

What can it be looking for on the network with About:Blank?
The main thing I can think of is LAN Automatic configuration
or Proxy settings but I didn't think that would happen with About:Blank.


Is it sufficient to set Work Offline (e.g. using OE)
before loading iexplore.exe? Is the delay present when you first
re-enable that (toggle Alt-F,W) and do a Refresh?

I ran Depends (from dependencyWalker.com) and Profiled Iexplore.exe as it
started.
This showed each DLL that was loaded, and isolated the DLL(s) that caused
the delay. Here is a section of the Profile output showing the delay:

00:00:09.078: DllMain(0x77C70000, DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH, 0x00000000) in
"c:\windows\system32\MSV1_0.DLL" returned 1 (0x1).
00:00:09.078: LoadLibraryW("C:\WINDOWS\system32\msv1_0.dll") returned
0x77C70000.
00:01:22.156: GetProcAddress(0x77C70000 [c:\windows\system32\MSV1_0.DLL],
"SpUserModeInitialize") called from "c:\windows\system32\SECUR32.DLL" at
address 0x77FE374C and returned 0x77C76B74.
00:01:22.156: LoadLibraryA("NETAPI32.dll") called from
"c:\windows\system32\RASAPI32.DLL" at address 0x76EE2B65.

The numbers at the beginning of the lines are the TIME since the Profile run
began. Notice the LONG pause between 00:00:09.078: and 00:01:22.156:.
Also notice that the pause appears to be during the call to
"SpUserModeInitialize".
I am suspecting that this is due to something related to Security, possibly
with the system looking for credentials.
The entire Depends Profile output is at:
http://home.houston.rr.com/cliftnorris/bs252/IE_profiled_with_Depends.txt

Does anyone have any ideas why this call to "SpUserModeInitialize" is taking
1 minute and 13 seconds? Do you think I am going in the right direction
thinking this is "security related".

Not necessarily. If it was security related I would expect the hang might
occur offline too. (BTW interesting diagnostics.)

Any other ideas?

Take a packet trace (e.g. with netcap), format it with Ethereal (or whatever
you like), correlate with timestamps where your 1 minute hang is.
(I assume you can use depends "starting profile" timestamp and compute
timestamps for those relative timestamps; otherwise you might prefer
to use FileMon to do that, again assuming that FileMon will detect at least
the file accesses needed by the LoadLibraryA calls.)

Also is iexplore.exe doing anything while that "hang" is occurring?
E.g. perhaps Task Manager would indicate something with its Processes
tab statistics.

With that amount of delay you could even switch to a cmd window
and try a netstat command:

netstat -abeovp tcp

Actually depending on what else is going on that may be sufficient
to know whether taking the suggested packet trace is justified.
E.g. use before and after statistics to find out if anything has changed.

Thanks,
-Clift Norris

Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
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