Occasional windows explorer 7 windows will not connect to the internet.

[Bob F]

I have had this problem for months, and would love to solve it.

Occasionally, when I open a new window in IE7, the new window will never connect
to the internet. It just sits there until it gives up opening my home page
(Google). Refreshing does not help.

If I leave that page and open another, that one may work fine, or I might need
to open up to 3 more before I get one that works. I can go back to any of the
unsuccessful pages and refresh, but that never helps. Opening additional pages
after the next successful one usually works, at least for awhile.

So far, I have been unable to find anyone else with this problem.

Q8200 processor on GA-p31-DS3l 4GB RAM. Win XP SP3
Comcast internel on DOCSIS 2 modem

 

[jim]

I have had this problem for months, and would love to solve it.

Occasionally, when I open a new window in IE7, the new window will never connect
to the internet. It just sits there until it gives up opening my home page
(Google). Refreshing does not help.

If I leave that page and open another, that one may work fine, or I might need
to open up to 3 more before I get one that works. I can go back to any of the
unsuccessful pages and refresh, but that never helps. Opening additional pages
after the next successful one usually works, at least for awhile.

So far, I have been unable to find anyone else with this problem.

Q8200 processor on GA-p31-DS3l 4GB RAM. Win XP SP3
Comcast internel on DOCSIS 2 modem

D/l and use IE9 ?

 

[Chris S.]

D/l and use IE9 ?

IE9 on XP? Where have you been? Not going to happen.

Chris

 

[Bob F]

I have had this problem for months, and would love to solve it.

Occasionally, when I open a new window in IE7, the new window will
never connect to the internet. It just sits there until it gives up
opening my home page (Google). Refreshing does not help.

If I leave that page and open another, that one may work fine, or I
might need to open up to 3 more before I get one that works. I can go
back to any of the unsuccessful pages and refresh, but that never
helps. Opening additional pages after the next successful one usually
works, at least for awhile.
So far, I have been unable to find anyone else with this problem.

Q8200 processor on GA-p31-DS3l 4GB RAM. Win XP SP3
Comcast internel on DOCSIS 2 modem

HAs anyone else ever seen this?

 

[Char Jackson]

HAs anyone else ever seen this?

I haven't heard of it before. Does the same thing happen if you start
IE with no add-ons? The "no add-ons" shortcut is in All Programs,
Accessories, System Tools.

On the tabs or windows that stall, do they appear to be stalling
during the DNS lookup, or is that step successful and they're stalling
while contacting the Google website? What does the error message say,
exactly?

 

[Bob F]

I haven't heard of it before. Does the same thing happen if you start
IE with no add-ons? The "no add-ons" shortcut is in All Programs,
Accessories, System Tools.

On the tabs or windows that stall, do they appear to be stalling
during the DNS lookup, or is that step successful and they're stalling
while contacting the Google website? What does the error message say,
exactly?

The failure message is the same as accessing a non-existant site, or doing it
without the internet connection. "Internet explorer cannot display the webpage".
Unfortunately, I just tried to duplicate it, and had no problem at all up to
maybe 30 windows.

I'll try the no-add-ons setting the next time I see it happen.

 

[Paul]

HAs anyone else ever seen this?

Things that can go wrong.

1) Third party "network helper" package, is shooting you in the foot.
Maybe some CD you installed, that was supposed to make "easy networking",
broke things. Sometimes an antivirus/malware product, either while IE7
is being installed, or afterwards, is interfering with it.

2) General networking. Since you can eventually get a web page working,
I don't see a point going here at the moment. Usually, there are
either built-in troubleshooters, or you can find a tool on
a place like www.microsoft.com/fixit, that can help with
general plumbing problems.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308007

3) The browser itself has "toolbars and addons". One of the first
things they'll ask you to do, is find a menu that allows those
to be disabled. Perhaps, in a Start menu, you see two options
for starting the browser, the first "normal", the second "Safe".
If that isn't an option, then check the menus while the browser
is running, for an option to disable add-ons. Then exit, and do
some testing.

4) In years past, the browser had "automatic proxy detection".
The browser would look on the local network, for a device that
provided a proxy or intermediary, for web surfing. We used to
have something like that at work. If you disable the proxy feature,
then the browser is supposed to fend for itself, and use regular
requests to the network. At work, that was probably the first
thing I'd disable in a browser Second thing, would be to
fix the home page entry

5) If you look in Add/Remove, some of the bigger software packages,
offer "repair" as well as "remove" options. What a "repair" would
do, is install the software, register DLLs and the like. What it
won't necessarily do for you, is reset any bad settings you might
have made by accident.

To test the accident scenario, you can try creating another user
account, effectively starting a profile from scratch. If that works,
then you'd know it was *some* kind of setting that was doing it.
Perhaps you could create a new user and give that a try.

Those are a few general hints, as I don't know for sure, what
those symptoms equate to. It sounds like "the plumbing is cleared"
after the plumbing is tested once, for lack of a better description.
With vanilla networking in the picture, that just shouldn't happen.
And commands like ipconfig, ping, nslookup and the like (in (2) above),
can help prove that the plumbing works immediately when you want it.

There is probably a newsgroup for internet explorer questions, where
you might get more focused help. Using a search engine, I can find
problem descriptions similar to yours, so keep looking. I'm just
not good enough, to walk you through all the steps and guarantee
a fix.

Paul

 

[Bob F]

I have had this problem for months, and would love to solve it.

Occasionally, when I open a new window in IE7, the new window will
never connect to the internet. It just sits there until it gives up
opening my home page (Google). Refreshing does not help.

If I leave that page and open another, that one may work fine, or I
might need to open up to 3 more before I get one that works. I can go
back to any of the unsuccessful pages and refresh, but that never
helps. Opening additional pages after the next successful one usually
works, at least for awhile.
So far, I have been unable to find anyone else with this problem.

Q8200 processor on GA-p31-DS3l 4GB RAM. Win XP SP3
Comcast internel on DOCSIS 2 modem

I recently replaced my cable modem with a different used DOCSIS 2 unit, and the
problem seems to have gone away, plus the downloads seem to happen faster.

 

[Bob F]

I recently replaced my cable modem with a different used DOCSIS 2
unit, and the problem seems to have gone away, plus the downloads
seem to happen faster.

Dang! Spoke too soon. It just started doing it again.

 

[Paul]

Dang! Spoke too soon. It just started doing it again.

Phone tech support at the ISP, and see if some configuration
info at their end, for your modem connection, got changed.
It could be, they have some process that audits the setup
once a day, and that "reset" things on you.

My ISP is horrible at stuff like that, so... good luck.

Paul

 

[Bob F]

Phone tech support at the ISP, and see if some configuration
info at their end, for your modem connection, got changed.
It could be, they have some process that audits the setup
once a day, and that "reset" things on you.

My ISP is horrible at stuff like that, so... good luck.

FWIW, My modem quit working yesterday, and Comcast sent someone out to check why
signals seemed to be low. It turn out that the cable out by the street had been
chewed on by animals. They replace the cable from the street to my house, and
everything is working way better than it has in months/years. The "browser
windows won't connect" problem still happens, but significantl;y less often.

Incidentally, the tech told me there was a filter on my line. Apparently, they
drive around testing for leaking signals, and if they find a leak, add a filter
to cause the customer problems, which is supposed to get the customer to call
and complain, at which time they come out and fix the problem. Seems like a
pretty mean way to do business to me. They could have told me a couple years ago
when they added the filter. No wonder I'va had so many problems.

 

[Paul]

FWIW, My modem quit working yesterday, and Comcast sent someone out to check why
signals seemed to be low. It turn out that the cable out by the street had been
chewed on by animals. They replace the cable from the street to my house, and
everything is working way better than it has in months/years. The "browser
windows won't connect" problem still happens, but significantl;y less often.

Incidentally, the tech told me there was a filter on my line. Apparently, they
drive around testing for leaking signals, and if they find a leak, add a filter
to cause the customer problems, which is supposed to get the customer to call
and complain, at which time they come out and fix the problem. Seems like a
pretty mean way to do business to me. They could have told me a couple years ago
when they added the filter. No wonder I'va had so many problems.

That's why they're the cable company.

Now that the tech has told you this, that means on the "very next
test for leakage", that filter is going back

Paul