Windows XP Home: Browsing is slow, many images and some pages do not show up

[Yarik Mezheritskiy]

Hi,

I have reviewed dozens of Web pages and newsgroup threads discussing
the problems with symptoms similar to what I observe (see below), but
so far neither of the recipes I found worked for me... I'm desperate,
and would like to avoid reinstalling the OS and all other software by
all means. Please help!

The main frustrating symptoms are:

(1) On too many Web pages, most of the images do not show up (like if
they couldn't be found). I see spots with red crosses instead. There
must be some sort of timeout involved, because I see browser trying to
get those images for some time and then "giving up". Refreshing
usually does not help. What does help (in every other case) is
right-clicking a red-crossed placeholder and asking the browser to
"Show picture"...

(2) Some Web pages just cannot be loaded at all. After some trying,
the browser says "Page cannot be displayed", like if the page didn't
exist.

(3) The last observation that may be relevant is the behavior of
nslookup program: it just cannot resolve any names! Neither with 2
seconds timeout, nor with 10 seconds timeout -- it almost always
complains that there was no response from the DNS server. Yes, namely
_almost_ always, because once in a while nslookup does manage to see
some response from DNS... Again, the most confusing thing is that the
browser doesn't seem to have any problems with resolving domain
names... or does it? Is it possible that failures of image downloads
are caused by some problem with DNS client?..

(4) I'm not absolutely sure, but it seems that the problems described
above started to harrass me only recently - after I applied a large
series of patches/upgrades from Microsoft's Windows Update service
(including Windows XP Home SP1a and Internet Explorer 6 SP1).

My current configuration is:

Hardware: Toshiba Satellite, 1.8G, 256K

OS: Windows XP 2002 Home Edition SP1
(Windows Version 5.1 Build 2600.xpsp2.030422-1633; Service Pack
1)

IE: Version 6.0.2800.1106.xpsp2.030422-1633
Update versions:; SP1; Q822925; Q330994; Q828750;

IPCONFIG:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : ZINFANDEL
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : wines.yarik.net
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : wines.yarik.net

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : wines.yarik.net
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/100 VE
Network Connection
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-08-0D-A9-4A-0B
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.20
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 216.139.32.33
216.139.33.37

As you can see, this notebook accesses the Internet via another
computer in may home LAN; that gateway computer is running Routing and
Remote Service under Windows 2000 Server and has no _any_ problems
with Internet access over 56K PPP-dialup (so everything must be just
fine with my ISP and their DNS servers).

FWIW: Both computers also run ZoneAlarm firewalls, but I really doubt
that it has anything to do with the problem in question (at least,
shutting both firewalls down doesn't change a bit in my dare
situation).

Please help, save me from insanity!

Thank you,
Yarik.

 

[arne]

try to disable the zonealarm firewall, restart your
computer and try to load a web page. does this help? if so,
it's probably a configuration problem with your firewall.

if this is no help, try another browser. i use opera (www.
opera.com) - check if this browser has the same problem, if
not, it's a configuration problem with internet explorer.

if you still have problems, i guess it's a problem with
your home network, but i doubt this...

hope this was somehow helpful.

arne

 

[Yarik Mezheritskiy]

Thank you for your response arne, but neither of the experiments
succeeded. (As a matter of fact, I was unable to download Opera -
alas, the download site I was referred to apparently falls exactly
into the category of sites which I cannot browse normally. So I
installed Netscape Navigator, and it behaves works even worse than IE,
basically showing the same symptoms.)

Firewalls also do not seem to do anything with the problem... After
all both firewalls were configured the same way and running few weeks
ago, when everything was just fine on the now suffering notebook...

Thank you once again, but I'm afraid I have to ask for other ideas.

I still have a strong suspicion that the problem was caused by one or
more XP updates (including service packs) that I installed recently.
This suspicion is reinforced by numerous newsarticles that I saw
complaining about some weird problems encountered by people after
upgrading XP (especially after installing XP SP1). But I couldn't find
any solution to that that would be less drastic than uninstalling SP1
and many other updates that may have to be deinstalled too. I could
try to do such uninstall, but only as a last resort, only if there is
no any other known way...

 

[Yarik Mezheritskiy]

One of the most weird things that drive me crazy is this:

If I ping a site by name, in most cases it works like a charm (and
shows pretty good latency for a 56K dialup) - for example:

Pinging www.yahoo.akadns.net [66.218.71.89] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.218.71.89: bytes=32 time=112ms TTL=56
Reply from 66.218.71.89: bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=56
Reply from 66.218.71.89: bytes=32 time=106ms TTL=56
Reply from 66.218.71.89: bytes=32 time=106ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 66.218.71.89:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 106ms, Maximum = 112ms, Average = 108ms

But if I try to run nslookup against the same site - if fails
miserably in 99.(9)% of cases - like here (note that nslookup was even
granted a 10 sec timeout instead of default 2 sec):

I'm not an expert in IP, so I can't stop wondering how such situation
is possible?

HELP!!!

 

[Mike]

The red x that you mentioned could be that your java is
disabled, from what I've read on this board it seems that
installing sp1 may change some settings.A good site to
have your computer analyzed is www.pcpitstop.com this
site is affiliated with compusa so I would trust it

 

[Yarik Mezheritskiy]

Well that the one I was looking for... Zonealarm....!
Uninstall it and see if it helps, I have found many firewalls giving
these kind of problems because they are generally flawed...

Turning ZoneAlarm (and even uninstallation of it) did not help.

BTW, uninstallation of SP1 and all the subsequent official Windows
updates did not help either... :-(

So I'm still stuck with the problem... Anyone has any new ideas?

Maybe the problem is not on the notebook, maybe it is on Windows 2000
Server that runs Routing and Remote Service? But I have no idea where
to look there (besides few obvious IP settings that seem to be
fine)...

2nd, dns lookup ups are not always detected the right way so your
ppp-dialer might not respond and stay offline.

Nope, the problem manifests when modem connection is alive and
kicking...

I personally prefer (best option) kerio winroute 4.x.

Hmm... I'm very open to the idea of replacing ZoneAlarm. But I don't
want to do it blindly... I would appreciate if you gave me at least a
couple of top reasons why WinRoute would be more convenient/efficient
for an intermediate (in TCP/IP) Windows user than ZoneAlarm. Or maybe
you could point me to any such comparison available somewhere online?
[Probably, this is a topic for a separate thread though...]

Thank you,
Yarik.

 

[Yarik Mezheritskiy]

The red x that you mentioned could be that your java is
disabled, from what I've read on this board it seems that
installing sp1 may change some settings.

I'm not sure what exactly did you mean by "java" -- Java or
JavaScript, but neither of those`seems to have anything to do with the
problem. I compared Java-related settings of two IE 6 installations
(on the suffering notebook and on the perfectly working workstation),
and did not see any differences. Of course, I looked only at those
settings that are accessible via IE's human interface.

A good site to
have your computer analyzed is www.pcpitstop.com this
site is affiliated with compusa so I would trust it

Interesting site, thanks. I'll certainly take a closer look at it, but
I'm not very optimistic regarding its chances to solve this particular
problem...

Thank you,
Yarik.