Strange behaviour of browser

[John]

A friend asked me for help but I have to confess I haven't got a clue this
time - I hope someone here can help.

She is finding that some websites are taking ages to load but others are
perfectly OK. She's using XP-SP2, IE6 and is on AOL. I've cleared cookies,
temp.
internet files, and history and her antivirus is up to date and scanned but
found nothing. I'm going to check for trojans and spyware next.

One example and something that is consistently repeatable is that if she
goes to Google.co.uk and selects pages from the UK, then enters "nrec" (not
sure of the significance of nrec [without the quotes]) into the search bar,
the results page takes about 30 to 45 seconds to load and the processor
useage goes up to 100%.

This happens every time we try it on her machine but, of course, doesn't
happen on mine. Any ideas anyone?

TIA,

John

 

[John]

A friend asked me for help but I have to confess I haven't got a clue this
time - I hope someone here can help.

She is finding that some websites are taking ages to load but others are
perfectly OK. She's using XP-SP2, IE6 and is on AOL. I've cleared cookies,
temp.
internet files, and history and her antivirus is up to date and scanned
but
found nothing. I'm going to check for trojans and spyware next.

One example and something that is consistently repeatable is that if she
goes to Google.co.uk and selects pages from the UK, then enters "nrec"
(not
sure of the significance of nrec [without the quotes]) into the search
bar,
the results page takes about 30 to 45 seconds to load and the processor
useage goes up to 100%.

This happens every time we try it on her machine but, of course, doesn't
happen on mine. Any ideas anyone?

Well, I've been back to my friend's house and installed Trojan Remover and
the free versions of AdAware and SpyBot S&D. Trojan Remover found nothing,
AdAware found 1 tracking cookie problem and SpyBot found 1 alert (Windows
Firewall Bypass) - which were all sorted out but the problem remains.

On further investigation I found that websites entered into the proper
address bar of the browser come up OK but, if we then go to Google and enter
any search string into the search bar, the system hangs and bringing up the
task manager confirms "Internet Explorer is not responding" and I have to
manually end the task.

Any further ideas folks?

Cheers,

John

 

[John]

A friend asked me for help but I have to confess I haven't got a clue this
time - I hope someone here can help.

She is finding that some websites are taking ages to load but others are
perfectly OK. She's using XP-SP2, IE6 and is on AOL. I've cleared
cookies, temp.
internet files, and history and her antivirus is up to date and scanned
but
found nothing. I'm going to check for trojans and spyware next.

One example and something that is consistently repeatable is that if she
goes to Google.co.uk and selects pages from the UK, then enters "nrec"
(not
sure of the significance of nrec [without the quotes]) into the search
bar,
the results page takes about 30 to 45 seconds to load and the processor
useage goes up to 100%.

This happens every time we try it on her machine but, of course, doesn't
happen on mine. Any ideas anyone?

Well, I've been back to my friend's house and installed Trojan Remover and
the free versions of AdAware and SpyBot S&D. Trojan Remover found nothing,
AdAware found 1 tracking cookie problem and SpyBot found 1 alert (Windows
Firewall Bypass) - which were all sorted out but the problem remains.

On further investigation I found that websites entered into the proper
address bar of the browser come up OK but, if we then go to Google and
enter
any search string into the search bar, the system hangs and bringing up
the
task manager confirms "Internet Explorer is not responding" and I have to
manually end the task.

Success! Brought the machine home with me yesterday because it was running
slowly in general and I wasn't happy that the browser and Google issue was
all that was wrong with it.

Using Memtest86+ proved the RAM to be OK, so I then used a SMART viewer and
discovered that the hard drive has two TEC (Threshold Exceed Condition)
errors on it. This was confirmed using #1 TuffTest Pro when, on doing a
Surface Analysis (Read/Verify) it had tested 22897 sectors with 11468
errors!

New hard drive called for, methinks

John