IE6 - Win2k - Strange problems when opening pages

[Alessandro Mica]

Hello all
I hope anybody can help me with this strange problem

Win2k sp4, all win updates
Ie6 sp1, all updates

I have a strange problem, not easy to describe, I think the best is to
provide an example

A lot of pages do not open correctly. When the page contains a lot of
images, and they are "identifying" ones (not easy to say, I'm speaking about
the images coming from servers leaving some cookies, etc) the page will not
load. IE6 becomes slow, after some seconds there is a timeout then the page
is loaded without images (there are a lot of "placeholders").
Moreover, no further traffic is possible from "that" website (that is, if I
click a link, after some seconds I get "page not found").
It seems like IE6 refuses any further traffic from that "nasty" site.

More details:

1) problem is affecting one user only, if I start win2k from another user
(same privileges) all goes ok.
2) cookies removed, cache removed, history removed, no results
3) antivirus is up-to-date, spybot, ad-aware, hijackthis, cwshredder, etc...
report nothing strange.
4) IE cache is set to 5 mb (1 or 1000 mb does nothing)


I could switch to another user and move all settings (it's not that
difficult, I only have desktop and OE very customized) but I'd prefer to
solve the problem. I already did this about one year ago and now the problem
shows in this user ,too.
Please help because I formatted last time in October 2001 and I'd like to
keep this "award-winning" installation. :-D
Besides this strange problem, the pc is working quite well. Apparently not
slow (according to an Athlon-1000 cpu), stable, responsive.

It seems a user-related configuration problem (altough I did not "played
around" too much).

I can provide a few more details.
Let's consider two sites, one is always perfectly loaded, the other one
shows the problem.

1) www.cubica.it
fast, simple, loaded in 2 seconds. Probably no "hidden" code behind images.
2) www.pronto.it
sometimes the first time I open it, it gets loaded completely.
If I refresh it, or click some link in it, the problem always appears.
Here is a screen capture of the problem
http://www.cubica.it/andrea/pronto.jpg

Please let me know if possible.

Thanks in advance

Orz.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

....

2) www.pronto.it
sometimes the first time I open it, it gets loaded completely.

In that case the whole thing appears to be cacheable
so you can try some tests using just the TIF.

First set Work Offline (Alt-F,W).
Next switch Security settings to High level
e.g. doubleclick on the zone icon in the Status bar
and provided you are already in the Default setting
(click that first if it's not greyed) use the slider
to set Security level to High (in English it's Alt-l,CursorUp)

If I refresh it, or click some link in it, the problem always appears.

Instead of using Refresh now that you are using the TIF
and now that scripting is disabled, rerender the page
by pressing Ctrl-N

Here is a screen capture of the problem
http://www.cubica.it/andrea/pronto.jpg

Let us know if the above procedure changes your symptoms.
Notice also that by doing so you will be able to use View Source.
I'm not sure how but View Source in the first window is disabled.


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---

 

[Alessandro Mica]

...

In that case the whole thing appears to be cacheable
so you can try some tests using just the TIF.

Hello,
lately the page (the example one, but other ones have the same behaviuor) is
NEVER loaded correctly

First set Work Offline (Alt-F,W).
Next switch Security settings to High level
e.g. doubleclick on the zone icon in the Status bar
and provided you are already in the Default setting
(click that first if it's not greyed) use the slider
to set Security level to High (in English it's Alt-l,CursorUp)
Done.


Instead of using Refresh now that you are using the TIF
and now that scripting is disabled, rerender the page
by pressing Ctrl-N

Done, same "wrong" display

Let us know if the above procedure changes your symptoms.
Notice also that by doing so you will be able to use View Source.

It seems that the source is complete because I see :
<html>
<head>
..... A LOT OF LINES HERE
</body>

I'm not sure how but View Source in the first window is disabled.

So it seems that the page is correctly loaded but it can't be "parsed" (hope
to explain).

I can immediately understand that the problem is going to appear because
(especially if there are a lot of images) IE6 hangs with the lower bar
message "40 images remaining" and after some seconds no image is loaded and
the page is wrong.
If I even "type" again the site address in another IE window, I get "not
found" error. So it seems that the address has been blacklisted or something
like that.
I have no strange antispyware software, realtime protection (only the
quick'n'dirty AVG antivirus). But, again, the problem DOES NOT occur on
another user onto the same PC.

Any further idea?

HTH

Thanks A LOT for your "attempted" help!

Orz.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

Hello,
lately the page (the example one, but other ones have the same behaviuor) is
NEVER loaded correctly

That invalidates my test then. ;]

Done, same "wrong" display

The test was designed to make use of the fact that page
is completely cacheable and on the fact that you indicated
it loaded correctly at least once.

It sounds now as if the page does not ever load correctly.
Therefore, there is nothing in the cache to be rendered
while you are in a Working Offline state.

One thing you could do instead would be to right-click Show Picture
each Red-X and hope that it would download separately.
BTW I'm not certain if Show Picture of a Red-X is valid.
If not you could toggle off Show Pictures (in Options,
Advanced tab, Multimedia section), reload the page from
the TIF again (as above) and then right-click image placeholders
for any images which were Red-X. I'm assuming that you
would get prompted to go back online but if that doesn't
happen either you could toggle off Work Offline before
attempting to reload just one missing image.

Even better you could right-click Properties on a placeholder,
capture its URL and then see if you could load that image in its
own new window. E.g. that way if there was an underlying HTTP
error message which the Red-X was representing, you would
be able to see that for yourself (without resorting to a packet trace.)
Of course that assumes that you have unchecked that useless default
Show friendly HTTP error messages
(Options, Advanced tab, Browsing section)

It seems that the source is complete because I see :
<html>
<head>
.... A LOT OF LINES HERE
</body>


So it seems that the page is correctly loaded but it can't be "parsed" (hope
to explain).

I doubt it. There seems to be something wrong with your network
settings which is making the downloads of images fail.

Did you ever try to use a "network optimizer" from your account?

Here's my hunch:

<title>KB314825 - How to Troubleshoot Black Hole Router Issues</title>

Fortunately, the problem site is ping'able. So the diagnostic
suggested by that article should work.

FWIW here is what happened at 1473 when I tried it:

ping -n 1 -f -l 1472 www.pronto.it

Pinging www.pronto.it [83.138.186.16] with 1472 bytes of data:

Reply from 83.138.186.16: bytes=1472 time=462ms TTL=51

Ping statistics for 83.138.186.16:
Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 1, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 462ms, Maximum = 462ms, Average = 462ms

ping -n 1 -f -l 1473 www.pronto.it

Pinging www.pronto.it [83.138.186.16] with 1473 bytes of data:

Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

Ping statistics for 83.138.186.16:
Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 0, Lost = 1 (100% loss),

I can immediately understand that the problem is going to appear because
(especially if there are a lot of images) IE6 hangs with the lower bar
message "40 images remaining" and after some seconds no image is loaded and
the page is wrong.
If I even "type" again the site address in another IE window, I get "not
found" error. So it seems that the address has been blacklisted or something
like that.

No. It's just IE's quirky way of giving you its diagnostics.


Good luck

Robert
---