Jump-starting IE

[Biggie Fries]

I have been searching these boards for a solution for some time but have found nothing, but then I don't know what words to use to narrow down my search.

Intermittently, and with increasing frequency, my internet connection seems to crap out although everything indicates I am still connected. It only occurs in IE and less frequently with OE. If I click a link, the back button or the forward button, nothing happens. The only way to get it started again is to hit stop and refresh. It used to never happen upon launch but now it's even doing it then - I click IE and I get a white page. The intervals go from several seconds to even a minute or two, and sometimes I have to do the stop/refresh thing two or three times.

It has never happened with any other type of program such as AIM or Ws_ftp. I know it's not the ISP because it has changed since this started. I know it's not the connection line because it does it with both DSL and dial-up, and besides, like I said before, it only does it with IE and OE. My DSL manager shows "connected to server" the entire time.

I have repaired and even re-installed IE, and then redownloaded and reinstalled it, and no difference. I even reinstalled Windows, and no difference. I have and use an anti-virus program and it has never picked up a virus. I even deleted and reinstalled all the adapters even though it does not seem to be a connection problem, but an IE/OE problem. It didn't make a difference either.

I feel like maybe the registry is corrupted, because my connection crapped out totally once after a lightning strike and I ended up having to delete keys having to do with winsock, but now I can't find the website that dealt with that so I am unable to try it to see if that works.

This has been going on for months now, and it happens about every second or third click now. I was two days late getting a website up for friends because I had to keep waiting for my connection to wake back up.

I have Win98SE and IE6.

[Miz]

Have you scanned for spyware, which can create the problems you're experiecing?

If not, download, install and run Spybot and/or AdAware (I use them both.) Let them clean up any spyware they find.

[Biggie Fries]

Sorry, I didn't know it would be relevant, so I didn't include that information....I don't have any spyware. Now you've got me curious how that would cause my connection to stick.

[rambler]

Sounds like you've got a corrupted INDEX.DAT in your Temporary Internet Files folder. You'll need to delete the entire folder structure from DOS (not a DOS window). Reboot to DOS (can you do this with SE? - if not use a W98 boot disk) and DELTREE C:\WINDOWS\TEMPOR~1. Reboot and Windows will recreate an effectively empty stucture.

[Biggie Fries]

Thanks, Rambler. I tried that and after waiting an hour I restarted and tried later. After waiting two hours the second time I restarted again. It's been almost a decade since I used DOS but I sure seem to remember deleting a folder....er, directory....was just as quick as it is in Windows. Nanoseconds. Is there any special reason why I have to delete this folder via DOS? And if so, how long should it take? And if it should indeed take only nanoseconds, why is it taking hours?

Thanks.

[Biggie Fries]

Rambler, third time was a charm. It only took about a minute. After surfing for awhile I'll let you know if it solved the problem. It was good to finally get all that mess cleaned out so even if it doesn't solve my problem it's good to know how to do that. Oh, I also realized why it must be done through DOS since some of those files would be being used by Windows. Lastly, Miz, I found out while browsing another thread why spyware came to your mind. But, even if I had had spyware and it had been calling home, wouldn't my dsl monitor still be showing up/downstream?

[Biggie Fries]

Deleting the possibly corrupt file either wasn't the problem or wasn't the whole problem. It's still doing it, only it's gone back to being about every 25th click instead of every 3rd. Any more ideas? Thanks.

[rambler]

You must have had an incredible amount of sh... I mean rubbish in there for it to take THAT long to delete TIF's. Suggests your TIF limit is too high, whatever is causing your current problem. Check it in Internet Options/Settings - you won't need much more than 50Mb (enough for to-and fro surfing), with DSL.

As to your dreaded IE "white page" problem, I had similar in my pre-DSL days with IE 5.1, I believe it was. Can't remember what cured it. I'm racking my brains to think back to the bad old days when I checked my calendar rather than my clock before attempting a large download.

[Biggie Fries]

rambler -

I assume it was the index.dat because I have few items in the TIF because I have IE set to delete eveyrthing on close and then I manually delete everything that doesn't automatically delete about once a week. I have recently reset it to 56MB from 1MB because someone else suggested my problem was becasue it was set too low, which I didn't think was it but I tried! Since I have DSL I have never felt the need to have a whole bunch of useless junk, pages I may never visit again, and even if I did I want to see the latest, so I have always kept it very low and cleaned it out regularly.

So, does anyone else have any problems? I want to reiterate that it is only with IE and very occasionally with OE - the computer itself does not stop, just my connection - there is no progress bar in IE, my DSL manager shows NO up/downstream, and if any other programs are up they keep grinding along just fine.

Thanks again, folks, for any ideas.

[Miz]

I don't know why, or how, spyware can create the problems you're having, I only know that it does...and I only figured that out by curing the same problem on several customer's machines by running Spybot and/or AdAware. HotBar is great at keeping IE and OE both from doing what they're supposed to, even though they both open normally and appear to be functioning.

As for IE opening blank pages, take a look at this page to see if anything there helps.