Windows 98SE "freezes" for 1 minute every time I close Internet Explorer6.

[Sol]

Hi there.

Well, a few days ago, a strange little problem started plaguing me.
First, let's discuss my system's specs.

MSINFO32 has this to say:

-----

SYSTEM INFORMATION
Microsoft Windows 98 4.10.2222 A
Upgrade using Full OEM CD /SrcDir=D:\WIN98 /IQ /U:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
IE 5 6.0.2800.1106
Uptime: 0:06:52:48
Normal mode
AuthenticAMD AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor (ed.: yeah, it's old =)
128MB RAM
84% system resources free
Custom swap file on drive C (5866MB free)
Available space on drive C: 5866MB of 9777MB (FAT32)
Available space on drive D: 9772MB of 9772MB (FAT32)

RUNNING TASKS
Kernel32.dll
MSGSRV32.EXE
Mprexe.exe
Mstask.exe
MMTASK.TSK
KB891711.EXE
Explorer.exe
Taskmon.exe
Systray.exe
Wmiexe.exe
Ddhelp.exe
Thunderbird.exe
Rundll32.exe
Msinfo32.exe

STARTUP PROGRAMS
ScanRegistry Registry (Machine Run) C:\WINDOWS\scanregw.exe /autorun
TaskMonitor Registry (Machine Run) C:\WINDOWS\taskmon.exe
SystemTray Registry (Machine Run) SysTray.Exe
LoadPowerProfile Registry (Machine Run) Rundll32.exe
powrprof.dll,LoadCurrentPwrScheme
SchedulingAgent Registry (Machine Service) mstask.exe
KB891711 Registry (Machine Service) C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\KB891711\KB891711.EXE
(ed.: HijackThis came up with the same results and no suspicious looking
entries of any other kind. Also, I take above average care not to allow
malware into my PC and I've never had an infection on the PC in
question, so there's that to consider.)

INTERNET EXPLORER
Version 6.0.2800.1106IS
Build 62800.1106
Product ID 55736-OEM-5334751-04305
Application Path C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer
Date of Last Install 3/9/06 1:17:51 AM
Language English (United States)
Active Printer Not Available
Cipher Strength 128-bit
Content Advisor Disabled
Update Versions ;SP1;Q905915;Q837009;Q833989;Q891781;q313829;Q912812;
Java VM Version 5.0.3810.0
IEAK Install Yes (ed.: I had IEAK downloaded once... I can't remember
if I installed it or not. I definetly have the IE 5 PowerTweaks
installed, so maybe that's what it means... I probably just don't know
what this is actually referring to. Pay no 'tention to the man behind
the curtain. =)

INTERNET EXPLORER CACHE
Page Refresh Type Always
Temporary Internet Files Folder C:\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files
Total Disk Space 9777 MB
Available Disk Space 5866 MB
Maximum Cache Size 1 MB
Available Cache Size 0 MB


-----

I install and uninstall a great deal of software on this machine on a
regular basis, though my problem didn't seem to crop up following any
particular installation and I haven't been doing much installing in the
past few days. I keep the disks (2 physical HDDs; see above)
defragmented fairly regularly and run scandisk on them regularly too, as
well as Steve Gibson's excellent SpinRite 6.0. I keep my machine
current with all applicable Windows Updates (which is now a non-issue
with good ol' Win9x =). I use cable Internet and connect out to the
great yonder through a hub (a straight up hub, not a switch or a router)
which itself plugs into a Linksys router which obviously connects to my
cable modem. I share the hub with 1 other PC and 1 other PC plugs
directly into a LAN port on the router. So my network looks (roughly)
like this:

GREAT YONDER
|
|
CABLE MODEM
| PC 2
| /
ROUTER----------HUB------
| \
| PC 3 (THAT'S ME!)
PC 1


This's in my home, if that matters.

That's pretty much all the pertinent pre-problem info I can think of to
tell you at this late (for me) hour...


....So here's the problem:

Whenever I close my 1 open IE window, my PC "freezes" for almost exactly
1 minute (if it's not dead on 60 seconds, it's pretty close; I watched
the clock several times . The reason I put quotes around freezes is
that the PC doesn't *completely* lock up. I mean, I still have control
of the mouse and keyboard, and in fact, I can click on the icons on my
Desktop and they're actually able to gain focus (you know, they turn
blue and "get selected"; click on an icon once in any version of Windows
if you have double-clicking enabled and you'll see what I mean). I can
click on different icons and change the focus too, and I can even use
the arrow keys on the keyboard to change icon focus (that's how I knew I
was still able to use the keyboard . I can click on the Start button
and bestow focus on it as well (click your start button and watch the
actual button itself change; that's what I see, minus the menu itself).
But, if I try and double-click on anything, nothing at all happens...
Until 1 minute later. Then, any folders I clicked on open up, any
apps start to run, etc. This has so far *only* occurred when I close
IE, and, as I said in the subject line, it happens *EVERY* time I close
IE. Well, actually that's not 100% true. If I simply open IE to my
start page and then close it without clicking any links or navigating to
any websites, then this problem does NOT occur. However, if I open
multiple windows (Ctrl+N) then, even if I merely close them and don't do
anything else, the PC still "freezes". Even stranger, if I open
multiple IE windows and then click a link in each window (say, 4
concurrently open windows) they all dutifully load the page with no
apparent performance hit...but if I close them all, then the PC *REALLY*
freezes, with almost no responsiveness on the mouse and keyboard, but
only for about the same blasted minute, maybe a little longer. Gah!

I've not tried much yet because I'm a little in fear of breaking stuff
on this PC... I need to make a current HDD
image/ghost/clone/what-have-you, but I'd kinda like to not take a buggy
clone if I don't have to... So you see the sort of catch-22 I'm keeping
myself in. =) In any case, I regularly clean out my temp files, browser
cache, and I have restarted the PC multiple times since this started
cropping up (in fact, when I first detected this chicanery, I thought
Windows was just locking up on me as it is wont to do, and I gave it the
old 3 finger salute and restarted a number of times before I noticed the
pattern... . I've turned the PC completely off once or twice also in
the hopes that that might help... So far no good. I read something
recently about Windows not liking if the root directory of the boot
partition being full of files, so I set about clearing out the rather
messy root directory of my C: partition (I was given this PC so, hey,
*I* didn't get it messy =). That too did no good. The only other thing
I can think of that I've done recently that's out of the ordinary is
that I accidentally downgraded my ASPI drivers from version 4.7something
to 4.60. I thought that may have been the cause of the problem, so I
re-updated my ASPI drivers to v.4.7whatever, but I'm still stuck with
the issue. But there it is anyway, maybe that means something and I
don't know it...

If anyone out there has any advice or ideas, I'd be very glad and
equally appreciative if you'd share it. I'd especially like to know if
this is an issue with IE itself, or if this is something else's cancer
making IE look like the culprit. My thanks go out in advance to anyone
who responds.

Cheers to one and all.

 

[Noel Paton]

Just a thought (not really my area of expertise, but it intrigued me!)
Have you changed the size of your TIF recently?? - have you cleared and
rebuilt it?
reading the MSINFO, it looks like you have only 1MB for the TIF - what
happens if you extend that to say 10MB?


--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2006, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.crashfixpc.com/millsrpch.htm

http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read on how to post messages to NG's

 

[Jon Kennedy]

To expand on what Noel has posted, I would suspect a problem with your TIF
(cache) - and that you have IE set to clear your cache when closing IE. The
setting is in IE at Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Security
section - "Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed".
Uncheck that box, click Apply, click Okay and see if your problem is solved.
If so, totally delete your TIF folder per the instructions here (it will be
recreated as empty when you reboot):
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

 

[Sol]

Have you changed the size of your TIF recently?? - have you cleared and
rebuilt it?

Now that you mention it, I did delete the TIF folder while booted to DOS
recently in an effort to 'recreate' it... Well, I'm not positive I did
that to this PC... I'll say I *probably* did it to this one. But I
haven't changed the storage space allocated for the cache in a long time.

reading the MSINFO, it looks like you have only 1MB for the TIF - what
happens if you extend that to say 10MB?

Unfortunately, nothing different happens. As I said, I set the cache to
1 MB a long time ago and haven't fiddled with it since.

Thanks very much for the response!
Cheers!

 

[Sol]

To expand on what Noel has posted, I would suspect a problem with your TIF
(cache) - and that you have IE set to clear your cache when closing IE.

Good guess, but I don't have it set to do so, actually. I played with
that setting a long time back and didn't like it (and I believe it was
on a different PC that I enabled it). I checked it regardless, just to
make sure, and it is currently (and was when I checked) disabled. Just
for kicks, I enabled it to see if it might automagically heal my PC, but
such was unfortunately not the case.

totally delete your TIF folder per the instructions here (it will be
recreated as empty when you reboot):
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

I went to the link and followed the appropriate Win98 instructions...but
this too did not solve my problem.

I greatly appreciate your interest.
Cheers!

 

[Robert Church]

Well I have the same problem - first time I've seen anyone else with exactly
the same freezing issue - mine freezes partially just like you describe -
but for about 3 minutes - and only after closing IE from some sites like
ninemsn - the default home page - Ive tried everything in the book - you
name it I've tried it - will have to reformat to cure I'm afraid

Rob

 

[oops!!]

Robert,

See if this may apply:

Internet Explorer 6 SP1 Update: Internet Explorer May Appear to Stop
Responding When Requesting Many Objects
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...4B-22DF-4100-B211-5CF7E0EAC5E1&displaylang=en

Zee

 

[oops!!]

I posted this below, but may be useful for you too:

Internet Explorer 6 SP1 Update: Internet Explorer May Appear to Stop
Responding When Requesting Many Objects
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...4B-22DF-4100-B211-5CF7E0EAC5E1&displaylang=en

Zee

 

[Robert Church]

Zee
Well tah for the suggestion - I downloaded the file and when trying to run
it message came up - you need service pack 1 - well I have service pack one
listed in the IE 6.0.2800.1103CO about box - and when I go to windows
update service pack 1 doesn't show up - but the point about this response
is my having the exact same freezing behaviour of the first post - and that
is quite a very unusual and specific freezing characteristic that I've never
ever seen posted before !!!!!
Rob

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

....

Good description! Unfortunately I'm not familiar with your OS and
AFAIK it does not have great diagnostics but FWIW my approach
would be to do some more testing to try to isolate the symptoms.


First of all, since it is easy to do on your OS I would try an IE Repair,
just to ensure a reasonable base if nothing else. E.g. Run...

rundll32 setupwbv.dll,IE6Maintenance

(Note: entry point name is case sensitive. The repair phase happens
during a forced boot, so you may as well stop all other app's first.)


You mentioned your network but haven't indicated if the problem
symptom can be shown to be independent of it. Nor is there any
indication if only certain kinds of content are involved.

For example,

Whenever I close my 1 open IE window, my PC "freezes" for almost exactly 1 minute

Does this happen if the only thing that that IE window had open
was About:Blank? Have you tried testing without a network connection too?
E.g. try making About:Blank as your Home page. Try also booting
without networking. Then in that case (no networking) you could go back
and see what all you could have open using offline browsing

I can click on the Start button and bestow focus on it as well (click your start button and watch the actual button itself change;
that's what I see, minus the menu itself).

What about right-click instead? Both Start button and Taskbar?

Have you tried using SysMon etc. to try to find the nature of your freeze?
E.g. it looks as if the problem is explorer.exe itself but I can't tell from
the details so far whether it could be due to CPU% (e.g. a loop) or a WAIT
(e.g. a missing interrupt). Even better I think (assuming the Win9x version
is as complete as the WinNT version) might be Process Explorer
(from SysInternals). E.g. among other things it could show you if the
iexplore.exe task is still hanging around until the "1 minute" elapses
or if something else is happening. Etc.


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---

 

[Sol]

I posted this below, but may be useful for you too:

Internet Explorer 6 SP1 Update: Internet Explorer May Appear to Stop
Responding When Requesting Many Objects
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...4B-22DF-4100-B211-5CF7E0EAC5E1&displaylang=en

Thanks for the link, but I had the same experience as Robert did:

I downloaded the file and when trying to run
it message came up - you need service pack 1 - well I have service
pack one

So, unfortunately, the patch didn't work. As a matter of fact, if you
go to the MS Knowledge Base article that goes with the patch you linked
to, Windows 98 (either Standard or Second Edition) isn't listed under
products the article applies to--even though it said Windows 98 was
supported on the download page...that's probably why it didn't work.

Oh well. Thanks for your efforts anyways!

Cheers!

 

[Jon Kennedy]

Here's another troubleshooting step to try.... This issue could be caused
by a browser extension (aka BHO, browser helper object, or add-on, plug-in,
etc.) that IE is using at the time it's closed. In IE go to
Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Browsing section, UNcheck "Enable
third party browser extensions", click Apply, click Okay, reboot. See if
that helps.

If it does, then you have a BHO, or possibly spyware/malware on your system
you need to track down.....

This may be caused by spyware/malware that's gotten installed on
your system. Use Ad-Aware, Windows Defender and/or Spybot Search & Destroy
to remove it.

Windows Defender (beta)
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Good sites on how to install and use Spybot -
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/tutorial/index.html
http://tomcoyote.com/SPYBOT/index1.php

Also download a winsock repair tool, to have just in case cleaning up
anything found breaks it -

Winsock repair tools:
LSPFix- all versions of Windows http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.zip
Winsock2 Fix- Win98, ME
http://www.bu.edu/pcsc/internetaccess/winsock2fix.html
LavaSoft- all versions of Windows-
http://digital-solutions.co.uk/lavasoft/whndnfix.zip

More information here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/tshoot.html
http://spywarewarrior.com/sww-help.htm

If no joy, in IE go to Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Browsing
section, uncheck "Enable third-party browser extensions", click Apply, click
Okay, reboot. If that solves your problem, then more troubleshooting is
needed to find out exactly which program, or Browser Helper Object (BHO) is
causing this problem. You don't want to leave it at that, as some BHOs are
useful or necessary - like Adobe Acrobat for reading .pdf files or an
essential component of Norton AV. Get BHODemon -
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3550.html - read all about BHOs.
Disable all items, and then gradually replace one or two at a time to narrow
down the culprit.

Or if you have IE 6 SP-2 you can do this within the browser:
How to manage Internet Explorer add-ons in Windows XP Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883256

If all the above fails, then the problem could be something new that the
spyware cleaners above don't have in their databases yet. In that case....
HijackThis direct download:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip
Tutorial on how to use HijackThis:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/htlogtutorial.html
Then post it's output log to the forum here for analysis and feedback by the
parasite experts:
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/
Or the other HijackThis Logs forums listed here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/forums.html

Or try this program to get some of the most nasty malware:
CWShredder direct download:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cwshredder.zip

An alternate resource for all of this and more:
http://www.aumha.org/secure.htm

 

[Robert Church]

Sol

Please let us know if you ever find the solution - well my freeze lasts
exactly 1 min 30 secs !!! - and I think you and I are the only people who
have experienced or at least reported to a newsgroup this very very specific
type of freeze - mine is oh so precisely like yours - quite different to any
other type of freeze and I'm running win 989 SE - like you - I've tried
everything - repairs - deleting index.dat files - just about every spyware
and anti virus check on earth - disabling all start up programs - running
system monitoring program to see what is going on during the freeze - I can
stop the freeze occurring if I change all the security settings to high -
but that's not the point - I have 3 other comps all on the same networks all
with the same programs and same version of I.E all on the same ISP etc
etc - and they don't have this problem !!!!!!!
As I said no option but to reformat - bummer !!!!

Rob

 

[oops!!]

Robert,

You can try the drastic way:

Download the full setup files for IE6SP1 and write down where you downloaded
them.

Learn how to do it, the easy way, here:

http://www.broomeman.com/support/wsiedown.html

Then, clean your system of IE, using this tool:

http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html

After the cleanup, install IE6SP1 from the location you wrote down when
downloading it.

Good luck,

Zee

Sol

Please let us know if you ever find the solution - well my freeze lasts
exactly 1 min 30 secs !!! - and I think you and I are the only people who
have experienced or at least reported to a newsgroup this very very
specific
type of freeze - mine is oh so precisely like yours - quite different to
any
other type of freeze and I'm running win 989 SE - like you - I've tried
everything - repairs - deleting index.dat files - just about every spyware
and anti virus check on earth - disabling all start up programs - running
system monitoring program to see what is going on during the freeze - I
can
stop the freeze occurring if I change all the security settings to high -
but that's not the point - I have 3 other comps all on the same networks
all
with the same programs and same version of I.E all on the same ISP etc
etc - and they don't have this problem !!!!!!!
As I said no option but to reformat - bummer !!!!

Rob

 

[Sol]

In IE
Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Browsing section, UNcheck "Enable
third party browser extensions", click Apply, click Okay, reboot. See if
that helps.

I'm sorry to rain on your party again Jon, but I already had BHO
extensions disabled--a long time ago. =) If I knew of a simple way to
dump a report of my IE security settings en masse, I'd just do that and
show you. But, alas, I don't know how, so you'll have to take me at my
word. I also have both "Install on Demand" settings *disabled* and I
also have the Security Zones (particularly the Internet Zone) configured
for optimal paranoia. =) If you need any more details, I'll gladly
provide them... But in a nutshell, I have everything locked down tight.

If it does, then you have a BHO, or possibly spyware/malware on your system
you need to track down.....

Not likely that I have any BHOs. I use the excellent BitDefender 8 Free
Edition to perform full system scans of my drives and so far it's turned
up nothing. And did I already mention that I enforce very strict
security on my PC? =)

This may be caused by spyware/malware that's gotten installed on
your system. Use Ad-Aware, Windows Defender and/or Spybot Search & Destroy
to remove it.

Again, not likely. I should mention I also use these fine antimalware
utils to complement BitDefender, and I occasionally perform an
antimalware scan using an online scanner such as TrendMicro's HouseCall
or (for kicks) Symantec's ridiculous Frankenstein-monster online
scanner. So far, I'm clean.

Get BHODemon -
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3550.html - read all about BHOs.
Disable all items, and then gradually replace one or two at a time to narrow
down the culprit.

Just to see what it would turn up, I downloaded and ran BHODemon... And
it found *no* BHOs! Whew. And rightly so. =)

If all the above fails, then the problem could be something new that the
spyware cleaners above don't have in their databases yet. In that case....

It's always a consideration, I know... Since I was going to anyway, I'm
gonna go grab a trial copy of NOD32 and I'll let you know if it turns
anything up. If it doesn't, I'm going to say that I'm probably clean
enough and that's that. I really do take good care of my PC as far as
security is concerned, so even though malware is, in this modern day,
generally the cause of all [Windows-based PC] software-related problems,
I'm almost 100% positive it isn't the cause of this problem.

HijackThis direct download

I actually mentioned (but didn't post, of course) my HJT log in my OP,
but you may not have seen the reference. In any event, I already ran
HJT and there was nothing suspicious in the log. Everything there I was
familiar with and could account for. No dice, I'm afraid.

I really do appreciate your continuing interest in my plight. I'm just
sorry that my problem isn't (or at least doesn't seem to be) as simple
as any of the things you've suggested... Robert's experience seems to
corroborate my belief that this isn't malware-related:

- I've tried
everything - repairs - deleting index.dat files - just about every spyware
and anti virus check on earth -

Nevertheless, I'll post NOD32's scan results and I'll do scans with all
my other antimalware utils. Maybe I do have something, who knows. In
any event, many thanks for your time and effort.

Cheers!

 

[Sol]

First of all, since it is easy to do on your OS I would try an IE Repair,
just to ensure a reasonable base if nothing else. E.g. Run...

rundll32 setupwbv.dll,IE6Maintenance

I tried this, and, unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem.

You mentioned your network but haven't indicated if the problem
symptom can be shown to be independent of it. Nor is there any
indication if only certain kinds of content are involved.

As far as what content triggers the freezing... I don't really know.
It seems to happen *whenever* I open IE and click a link in any web
page. My actual browsing doesn't appear to be any worse than it ever
was, so, for example, I can check my webmail and browse to many
different web sites; but whenever I close IE after having browsed
anywhere/clicked anything (any link, that is), then it freezes as
stated. It seems to happen regardless of the content of the web page
I'm at or browsing to. As far as this being independent of my network
setup, I should mention that neither of the other 2 Windows 98 PCs on my
network have this problem.

Does this happen if the only thing that that IE window had open
was About:Blank?

No, it doesn't.

Have you tried testing without a network connection too?
Then in that case (no networking) you could go back
and see what all you could have open using offline browsing
(or, in view of your limited cache) local file browsing. <w>

Very good question. Just to ensure I'd have enough to browse offline, I
increased my cache to 10MB and released my IP (ipconfig /release_all).
Then, I opened IE and selected "Work Offline" when it complained about
the lack of a connection. I browsed around my cached pages, closed
IE... And it *still* "froze"! Evidently this problem is *not*
dependent on a network connection... If you read this Robert, I wonder
if you'd try it out to see what happens on your PC. Very weird...

What about right-click instead? Both Start button and Taskbar?

Context menus don't show up when I right-click *anything* during a
"freeze", including the Taskbar and Start button. Though, in testing
this, I noticed something: when the "freeze" began, I started
right-clicking things like mad and noticed that I was, after a few
seconds of clicking, unable to bestow focus on anything--actually, I
couldn't do anything *at all* let alone bestow focus--until the "freeze"
subsided. Evidently, the more stuff I do when the "freeze" is on, the
more sluggish and "backed up" the PC becomes... Gah! I *SO* wish I
would've backed up my registry before this started happening. Then
maybe I could've just restored and gone on my merry way... Grr! =(

Have you tried using SysMon etc. to try to find the nature of your freeze?
E.g. it looks as if the problem is explorer.exe itself but I can't tell from
the details so far whether it could be due to CPU% (e.g. a loop) or a WAIT
(e.g. a missing interrupt). Even better I think (assuming the Win9x version
is as complete as the WinNT version) might be Process Explorer
(from SysInternals). E.g. among other things it could show you if the
iexplore.exe task is still hanging around until the "1 minute" elapses
or if something else is happening. Etc.

I took a look at SysMon, and, assuming we're talking about the same
software here, (http://www.sysmon.org) then I was a little confused by
it... So I went for ProcessExplorer over at good ol' Sysinternals
(which, if you read just above the download links, is actually the exact
same program for Win9x and WinNT; the different links are so they can
track what OSs people are using it on, it says). So... I ran
ProcessExplorer, browsed some on IE, closed it, then watched
ProcessExplorer. At first, nothing happened--it just said the System
Idle was using a bunch of CPU time (like it always does when you aren't
doing anything) and the CPU usage fluctuated a tiny bit here and there
(like it always does). But then, I right-clicked the Taskbar and Start
button... and ProcessExplorer *COMPLETELY FROZE*! =) No CPU usage
values or anything were changing--none. I wasn't expecting that at all.
I have no idea what that could mean. Any ideas? =)

Thanks a million for your help and time!

Cheers!

 

[Robert Church]

Zee

Thanks for that advice - I'll give it a try - nothing to loose if ones
thinking of a reformat as the other even more drastic option

Rob

Robert,

You can try the drastic way:

Download the full setup files for IE6SP1 and write down where you downloaded
them.

Learn how to do it, the easy way, here:

http://www.broomeman.com/support/wsiedown.html

Then, clean your system of IE, using this tool:

http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html

After the cleanup, install IE6SP1 from the location you wrote down when
downloading it.

Good luck,

Zee

 

[Sol]

Not likely that I have any BHOs. I use the excellent BitDefender 8 Free
Edition to perform full system scans of my drives and so far it's turned
up nothing. And did I already mention that I enforce very strict
security on my PC? =)

Well, I have to eat a little crow on this one. I ran NOD32 (both the
protected mode Win9x version and the real-mode DOS version) and
thankfully it turned up nothing... But the free edition of Ad-Aware
found '7' critical objects, all of which were good ol' Alexa
"let's-archive-the-web-and-your-identity" Internet. The 7 objects were
registry entries under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Browser
Helper Objects (I think)... So, I guess I wasn't as clean as I thought.
At least it was only Alexa. I'm sure it ended up on my system because
I allowed an Alexa zombie site/sites into my IE Trusted Zone at some
point. Sigh. Other than that, nothing from Ad-Aware.

What is worth mentioning, though, is what happened when Ad-Aware
finished scanning. Here's the context: last night I left NOD32 for
Win9x running and closed it out this morning when I awoke. My PC was on
for the rest of the day and I used it off and on until just about 2
hours ago when I ran Ad-Aware (full system scan with freshly updated
sigs, yada yada). Now, when I first opened up Ad-Aware, I forgot that I
had NOD32 for Win9x still running in the background, so I closed
Ad-Aware, shut down NOD32, then opened Ad-Aware again. It did its scan,
I removed Alexa, and then I closed Ad-Aware. After that, my PC began to
hang for about a minute after seemingly every little thing I did: I
cleared my browser cache and my PC hung; I opened a context menu and my
PC hung; I deleted some files and my PC hung; etc. I then uninstalled
Ad-Aware (surprisingly, no hang when I did this) and NOD32 as well
(again, no hang) and then hastily shut the PC down (no noticeable hang
there), waited for a few minutes, and turned the thing back on.
Thankfully, my PC seems to be back to normal (except for the "freeze"
issue detailed in my OP). I don't have the faintest idea of what
happened when Ad-Aware finished scanning... I'm beginning to believe
Robert's solution may unfortunately be the only viable one. Too bad I
can't afford to take the format "plunge" myself... Sigh and sigh.

Thanks for reminding me I'm human via BHOs. =)

Cheers and thanks again!

 

[Sol]

Sol

Please let us know if you ever find the solution

Well, I don't want to get your hopes up unnecessarily, but I had a thought:
a few days back (I no longer remember exactly when or under exactly what
context) I uninstalled Norton Systemworks (2003, I believe) from this
PC. The people who originally owned the PC put that crap on here, *not*
me. =) Well, I had uninstalled most of the individual components of
Systemworks a long time ago, but for some reason I kept Norton Ghost
installed on here (I never used it since I clone my disks with the Linux
coreutil dd). So I finally uninstalled it and the rest of the
Systemworks suite a few days back... And it may have been before all
this trouble with IE began, though I'm unsure. Tell me, did you ever or
do you currently have any Symantec software on your affected PC? Norton
Antivirus, Ghost, Partition Magic--anything? If so, did you uninstall
any of it recently or has any of it started flaking out on you?

Just an idea. I mean, I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Symantec software may not be the cause of all PC problems...but they're
pretty close. =)

HTH
Cheers.

 

[Robert Church]

Sol,

No not ever used Symantec - well aware it often gives probs - so are you
saying your partial freezing is now cured??? - not done it yet but will take
Zee's well set out procedure for a total removal and reinstal of I.E 6.1

Rob