What's going on with my internet browser?

[SuperShyGuy]

Earlier this morning my browser - Internet Explorer 5.5 - started reacting VERRRY slowly. When I click on stuff there's about a second lag before it reacts. When I type stuff out, the letters don't appear right away, again a lag. Actually when I do pretty much anything at all with it, there's a lag now and I can't figure out what's causing it. It doesn't seem to be happening with any other program on my system. I've ran Ad-Aware, nothing (out of the ordinary anyway), ran scandisk, ran a defrag, still having a lag problem. It's really more of an annoyance than a real problem, still it wasn't happening yesterday and today it is so something's obviously changed, and I like to know what's going on with my system. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[fgarvb1]

Maybe a program or two that is using a lot of processor time.

what do you have running?

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Maybe a program or two that is using a lot of processor time.

what do you have running?

That's what baffles me - nothing that wasn't running yesterday. Hmmmm, wait a sec. (I'm doing this on the fly), there one thing in my system tray (or whatever the window that comes up when you press Ctrl Alt Delete is called) I don't recognize, it's simply called "Loader" and when I clicked on it to shut it down I got the "Program is not responding" window. I closed whatever that loader thing was. There's still a lag though. Wonder what the hell that thing was?

 

[NocturnalGenius]

If I rememebr right loader.exe is a spyware program (could be wrong tho) ... just in case ... Head to download.com and find a program called AdAware 6.0 (its free) ... it will search your computer for any nasty spyware that might be on there and clean it off for you. AdAware is probably the easiest to just pick up and use. Also, make sure your anti-virus program is kept up to date (check for updates several times a week). And this wont help your current situation, but it will someday in the future ... make sure you keep windows updated. With a program as large as Windows (think millions of lines of code) there are always bug fixes and security updates out there. If its still giving you trouble give me a hollar ... I can help you diagnose it more.

~Matt

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Had Ad-Aware for months, ran it this morning. Picked up some stuff, but like I said nothing out of the ordinary stuff it always picks up, and it doesn't catch whatever this "Loader" was. I can't seem to find where it's hiding in my folders either.

 

[whoops]

I use a mac but....

you may want to try running winconfig from the command prompt. look for unfamiliar programs in your startup and remove them. do one at a time and if something goes wrong, press f8 during startup to come up in safe mode.

 

[ffemtp]

do a search for spybot it will find more then adaware

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Could someone post a link to Spybot?

 

[Mogwai7]

[Removed]

 

[ReadyOne]

Sypbot is at Spy-Bot Search and Distroy Or, try tucows.com and search.

Are you also getting a lot of hard disk access? If so, Indexing Service may be getting you. It's an Office feature, and in some versions of Windoze, a system feature.

 

[cookiejar]

For one, you might want to install Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org/ It is a free, stable, and more compliant browser that IE is.

Also, spyware and stuff won't junk it up, if you want a trimmed version you can download the Firebird browser from mozilla.org as well.

Ad-aware can be found here: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/


In my experience with dealing with Windows, IE tends to always screw up with time... Also, you really should do a windows update... 5.5 is very old and exploitable.

I had Mozilla but switched to crazy browser...it's even better. I've had it a week and not one pop up yet...

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Are you also getting a lot of hard disk access? If so, Indexing Service may be getting you. It's an Office feature, and in some versions of Windoze, a system feature.

I'm not sure I understood this part.

 

[RyanC]

Try this site......

http://forums.speedguide.net/index.php?

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Bump

 

[SuperShyGuy]

One last bump, for all the good it will do. I'm running Adaware, Spybot, AVG 6.0 as my antivirus software, none of that is helping me fix the problem. Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[Carnus]

Dump your temp files, and your temporary internet files, to do the temp files, go to a dos prompt, type in 'set' and hit return, look for the variable temp, change to that folder and delete everything you see, if it won't delete some of the files thats ok, they are just ones that are in use, then dump your temporary internet files the normal way, (tools, internet options) also if you don't mind losing your cookies kill those as well, this should take care of greatly help the issue.

Carnus

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Dump your temp files, and your temporary internet files, to do the temp files, go to a dos prompt, type in 'set' and hit return, look for the variable temp, change to that folder and delete everything you see, if it won't delete some of the files thats ok, they are just ones that are in use, then dump your temporary internet files the normal way, (tools, internet options) also if you don't mind losing your cookies kill those as well, this should take care of greatly help the issue.

Carnus

Actually I killed out most of my temp files about a week ago, about 50-60 meg worth. As for the DOS prompt, I'm on Windows ME so that's not going to work too well. But dumping those files that I could didn't help a bit. I have to say, it's got me stumped. It isn't being done by any spyware that's being picked up, I'm virus free, I killed my temporary files that I can. I don't get it.

 

[ReadyOne]

The DOS prompt in Win ME is obtained by booting your repair disk. This is not a bug but a fee-chure.

BTW, did you try system file checker? "Start" "Run" and put "sfc /restore" on the command line. I might regress some fixes to various programs, so be careful what you let it restore. Frequently, you need experience to spot what might have gotten changed but not recorded in the install log. So this might not be the way to go for you.

You need some tools, like a process viewer, to see who is getting how much time. I suspect the culpret will the iexplore.exe itself.

This suggests an OCX or Java VM problem. Sorting out the good, bad, and ugly in there is a real challenge. Norton System Works provides a few good tools, such as an OCX un-installer, registry checker/cleaner, and process viewer. It also includes antivirus.

Speaking of which, several anti-virus packages have caused problems with IE. They come and go -- first the AV people update their scanning engine/hooks into IE and Windows, then after a couple of definition updates, they update their engine again and fix the problem.

Also competing AV programs can really slow things down, for example running McAffe and Norton at the same time.

I make my living fixing MS software systems, and there have been several times when I couldn't fix a slowdown. It's not like the old days when we had the trace and monitor tools, and could even look at the program logic notes, perhaps even the code, and get a feel for the interactions between the components.

 

[MagicFingers]

Super SG,

Are you running MS Office '97 by any chance?
If so, FindFast may be doing it.

 

[Bobmi357]

If you're seeing a lot of disk activity, you may need to start deleting some stuff on your system, and run a defrag.

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Okay, that was a lot of stuff.

First off, I've actually shut FindFast off, a long time ago and I can't remember why, but I disabled it turning on at startup. I think it was because it's non-essential so I just cut it from my startup.

I actually run defrag fairly often, and I did clear up some space on my drive. That didn't help either. I realize at this point I'm becoming a pain.

The rest sounds a bit over my head. I'm really not sure where to go next, but I really can't afford to be shelling out for Norton at the moment even if it's a good thing to have. The slowdown isn't the end of the world, I may just have to live with it it seems.

 

[Bystander]

try http://www.doxdesk.com/ and see if this guy gives you any info.
i'd say just update to v6.0 or get mozilla. its not a bad browser if you can put up with a few minor quirks.

 

[SuperShyGuy]

Since this thread started I alread upgraded to 6.0, forgot to mention that. No luck.

 

[eyefish]

Earlier this morning my browser - Internet Explorer 5.5 - started reacting VERRRY slowly. When I click on stuff there's about a second lag before it reacts. When I type stuff out, the letters don't appear right away, again a lag. Actually when I do pretty much anything at all with it, there's a lag now and I can't figure out what's causing it. It doesn't seem to be happening with any other program on my system. I've ran Ad-Aware, nothing (out of the ordinary anyway), ran scandisk, ran a defrag, still having a lag problem. It's really more of an annoyance than a real problem, still it wasn't happening yesterday and today it is so something's obviously changed, and I like to know what's going on with my system. Anyone have any ideas?

SSG
Same thing started happening to me about a week ago.
Everything was working fine until a website attempted to install Global Dialer on my computer.

 

[Bystander]

sometimes those dialers and stuff make their way on your pc anyway.
the website i posted in my first post http://www.doxdesk.com/ helped me a lot in getting rid of stuff my spyware destroyer was not finding for some reason.