Is there a known issue with IE8 causing slow desktop paint/redraw?

[bargz]

I have Windows XP SP3, and I decided to install Internet Explorer 8 last
week. It installed fine, and I used it for a week, but my desktop UI speed
had become NOTICEABLY sluggish: when I move windows around, there would be a
white "lag" behind them, similar to turning on "mouse trails" for your
cursor. It acted like I had disabled video acceleration. Also, YouTube
videos were jittery and my CPU utilization was very high while watching.

Thinking it may have been outdated NVidia drivers, I downloaded and
installed the latest release from NVidia's web site, but the situation did
not improve.

I've searched the web and the newsgroups and cannot find anyone with a
similar problem; I found some people complained about sluggish WEB PAGES with
IE8, but my issue is not that web pages are slow to load, but specifically
it's a problem with my GUI rendering speed.

Anyway, this morning I uninstalled IE8, rebooted, and now my GUI speed is
back to normal (fast) -- I can move windows around without trails -- so it is
obviously something with Internet Explorer 8.

My system specs:
Dell 400SC
Pentium-4 HT 2.8GHz single core
3 GB memory
NVidia GeForce 7600 GS 512MB AGP 8X, driver version 185.85
Dual LCD monitors
Windows XP SP3 with all high-priority updates

Thoughts? Anyone?

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

I have not seen any other posts (or posted bugs) about such behavior.

No-charge support for Internet Explorer 8 installation, set-up and usage
(only) is available via the phone based on your locale through 31 December
2009. Customers must be running Windows XP or Windows Vista in a non-domain
environment.
=> US & CA Residents: 1-866-234-6020
=> Other locales: https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?&prid=13043

My personal recommendations include:

=> Install IE8 manually, not via Windows Update/Automatic Updates!!

=> Uninstall all third-party toolbars (e.g., Google; Yahoo; Windows Live)
and third-party Windows Themes before installing IE8.

=> Close all open applications (i.e., anything with a taskbar icon) before
installing or uninstalling IE8.

=> I would strongly recommend disabling your anti-virus application and any
anti-spyware application's "system protections" (other than Defender's)
before installing (or uninstalling) an IE upgrade. If you're running a
third-party firewall, I would recommend disabling it and then enabling the
Windows Firewall before installing (or uninstalling) an IE upgrade.

=> Create a Restore Point manually before installing IE8. [Do NOT use
System Restore to remove/uninstall IE8; instead, see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700. Then use the Restore Point prior to
reinstalling IE8 per these recommendations. Norton users will need to see
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/symantecdoc1.html.]

=> Reboot twice after installing or uninstalling IE8.

=> For best chance of success with IE8, make certain that your anti-virus
application, any anti-spyware applications (other than Defender), and your
third-party firewall (if any) are supported in IE8 Final before you decide
install it.

 

[Steve Hebert]

I haven't heard of this particular situation, but there are interactions
between IE8 and desktop GUI theme management software. Are you using
windows blinds or other theme management software? Have you in some way
modified the standard windows display themes?

Steve

 

[rob^_^]

Hi Barg,

See this blog post.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tonyschr/archive/2005/05/25/desktop-heap-limitations.aspx

Regards.

 

[JimB]

I am using Windows XP, SP3

 

[Anteaus]

Also makes me wonder if you have the Active Desktop on turned on.
('View my desktop as a webpage..' in display settings)
This always gives rise to issues, has done since IE4.

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

[Active Desktop is disabled in IE7 and IE8.]

Also makes me wonder if you have the Active Desktop on turned on.
('View my desktop as a webpage..' in display settings)
This always gives rise to issues, has done since IE4.

 

[Arfur]

I'm seeing exactly the same problem as Bargz describes, namely a slowdown of
the desktop background with white lag. It started when I upgraded to IE8 but
my story gets a bit sadder...

At first I didn't realise it was IE8 but I did notice that the white lag
cleared up if I were to stop the explorer.exe process. When I restarted
explorer.exe then the white lag returned. I decided that there might be a
registry corruption causing explorer to slow things down so I did a system
restore to the previous week and then everything then seemed ok.

The following day I noticed that IE8 was no longer working and then I
realised that the restore had restored me to before I installed IE8. So I
reinstalled IE8 and to my dismay the white lag returned.
So next I decided to can IE8 and roll back to IE7. I uninstalled IE8 and
installed IE7 but to my further dismay IE7 refuses to run - it just drops
back to the desktop.
So now my choices are to have IE8 with a slowdown or to move over to Firefox
(which I'm currently using but it keeps locking me up so i want it
uninstalled asap).

Help!

another clue - with IE8 installed then I can't change the background without
a restart. The old background remains on the desktop even after I've changed
it in the display properties window.

My specs are:
Fijitsu siemens Pentium 4 HT 3.6 GHz
2 GB memory
NVidia GeForce 7950 driver version 182.08
Windows XP SP3 with all high-priority updates

Intersting that Bargz also has Pentium HT chip?

any advice appreciated...

---------

 

[Twayne]

Interesting: I have almost the same story here this evening. IE8 came
up as an update with dotNET 3.5 so I figured what the hell, give it a
try. Did an incremental backup, stored a system state, and let 'er rip.
"Rip" is right. It took forever to install (over an hour) and the whole
machine dropped to its knees w/r to speed.
Several Restarts & a Cold Boot later I'd have enough and dropped back
to the drive image just prior to those updates. Everything's back to
nifty now and I've told update to never offer those to me again. The
dotNET never did get installed.
I've heard rumors that if you download ie separately it's OK but for
now I think I'll live with 7 and let 8 ripen for a long while more. The
whole thing was a PITA, like most of microsoft's efforts lately. Soon's
I get all the drivers I need, MS is gone, gone, gone! XP is the only
tie I have left and I can't wait to disconnect from it. Everything else
has been replaced except VB which I no longer use. I'm running low on
Vaseline!

Twayne`

 

[hdonthecheap]

I have exactly this slow painting problem -- and have researched this all over.

The only common thread in all these posts is "NVidia GeForce".

My two computers have NVidia GeForce cards, I have slow painting problem
with IE8. I remove IE8, painting problem gone.

Other people without NVidia GeForce cards do not report this problem --
generally speaking. Nothing posted on NVidia forums about it ...

Just a guess.

 

[VzzBxx]

The common item I picked up on was "Pentium-4 HT", think it might be a
logical processor issue?

What processor type have you got?

 

[Harry Johnston [MVP]]

The common item I picked up on was "Pentium-4 HT", think it might be a
logical processor issue?

If the HT stands for hyperthreading, perhaps you could try disabling
hyperthreading (there is usually a BIOS option to do this) and see if it makes
any difference?

Harry.

 

[John]

I have WindowsXP Home SP3 and also nVidia GeForce. I recently tried IE8
with the result of a slowdown in speed particularly my Outlook Express. I
didn't realize it could be due to nVidia GeForce, however I have since
uninstalled IE8 and all is OK again.

 

[hdonthecheap]

yes, one computer is an older Dell 8400 with p4 HT 3.2 ghz but the other
computer is newer lenovo with intel core-2 6700 2.66ghz. The p4 has gef
6800 and the ibm has gfe 7300le nvidia cards. CPU architectures are pretty
different between machines.

BTW, slow paint is one problem, broken desktop is the other. You cannot
change desktop images after ie8 install on both machines. I do not think
people realize IE8 problem immediately because there maybe a long time
between installation and when they try to change their desktop background.

I came up with this theory by reading peoples hardware configurations that
experienced the problem. Everything was different between postings except
Nvidia gef cards. Some MS tech with tools could shed light on this theory
but I'm not going to spend the time. Can live without ie8 until I get a new
computer with win7 on it.

Like I said, just a guess.

 

[Unknown]

FYI----I have exactly the same configuration I.E. XP Home, SP3. and Nvidia
GeForce. I installed IE8 when announced and
have had NO slowdown whatsoever. I would suggest you investigate your virus
programs for the cause of the slowdown.

 

[VzzBxx]

Thanks for the tip, I hadn't thought to try that.
Unfortunately the slow paint is still there with hyperthreading disabled. I
tried twiddling with some of the process affinities as well but no joy.
And for the record it's not the virus checker.

However if I temporarily kill the explore.exe process then the problem
clears up. Obviously this isn't even a workaround never mind a cure.

 

[gjpc]

Yes there is definitely an issue here. A very severe issue. I installed IE8
this morning when update informed me that it was downloaded and ready for
install. After the mandatory reboot, I noticed paint was extremely slow. My
test for paint is to open a empty notepad, grab it by the task bar and shake
the bejeezus out of it. On my pre IE8 system this was rock solid, it just
moved around the screen as fast as I could shake it. On the post IE8 system,
had trails across all 5100 pixels of my 1600 pixel high horizontally spanned
desktop.

My next step was to roll back, of course. I went back to my Wednesday
restore point, just to be safe. I was relieved to see that my desktop was
back to its normal paint speed, notepad dances with the cursor.

But wait, there's more!

IE does not work. Though it is not my primary browser, I use it for silly
stuff, like windows update, Netflix DRM viewing, stuff like that. When ever I
tried to light up a IE based task IE took a dive, and get this, It does not
even give a fialed app dialog box. NOOOOOOO, it just goes away.

So I found this thread. PA Bear says, use the remove function to uninstall
IE8, NOT the restore point. So I oh boy, how am I not going to wind up not
doing a sysgen? OK, re-install IE8. Yup the slow down is back. BTW I use
active desktop for a bunch of monitoring web pages, so just for haha's I
disable all the active desktop. Hey its faster, I dunno if it is as fast as
pre IE8 but now I want my old machine back. So I do the IE8 uninstall and
again the mandatory re-boot.

RATS! IE7 is still not working. No IE7 no Windows update.

ANYONE have an idea how to get IE7 back?

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

To avoid confusion, please begin a new thread in IE General newsgroups about
your specific problems. State your IE version and full Windows version
(e.g., WinXP SP3; Vista SP2) in your first post. Thank you.

 

[Leonard Grey]

"...I went back to my Wednesday restore point..."

Wrong. Should have followed Microsoft's published instructions for
removing IE 8. Now you have a mess on your hands.

 

[gjpc]

Yea, yea yea leo, ever notice that there is no remove for IE7? Why should
there have been one for IE8?