I’m on my school’s network. For the past several months, whenever I’m running an internet browser (be it Netscape, MSN, Neoplanet, whatever), my connection will freeze for about 7-8 seconds. It’s been slowly getting more frequent; now it happens about every 5 minutes. When this happens:
– Nothing in the window moves except for the mouse cursor. No banner ads, nothing to suggest that a page is downloading, nothing.
– The cursor will not change into a pointy-hand-thing when it passes over a link.
– Anything I type or click on during the freeze works, but only once the freeze is done.
– I cannot close or minimize the browser window, nor can I restore a window so that it pops up in front of my frozen browser. Again, if I click minimize when it’s frozen, the browser will minimize once the freeze is over. Ditto putting windows in front of the browser.
The freeze does not affect:
– Other people’s computers. It’s just me, not the network.
– AOL Instant Messenger
– My computer when my browser is minimized.
This is getting very annoying. Does anyone know what’s wrong? Thanks.
Happens to me sometimes too, it probably some ad site or java program on the net on a web site running that takes time to load. 5 to 7 seconds is nothing. maybe you could try a program that keeps ads on web sites from showing up?
No, I’m fairly certain it’s not that. Like I said, nothing is happening during these freezes. My computer isn’t thinking, my browser isn’t loading anything (or, more accurately, it stops in the middle of loading something). The freezes come at regular intervals (I’m getting pretty good at knowing when they’re about to hit) and it doesn’t matter what kind of site I’m visiting.
One thing I did forget to mention in the OP is that the freezes always occur while a page is loading. I could sit here and type this post for 30 minutes and be fine, but a split second after I hit “Submit Reply,” the browser will freeze for 7-8 seconds. After that I can go about my business for the next 5 minutes or so, but after that the next page I load will freeze me. It’s not so bad now, but what worries me is that the freezes seem to be getting more frequent, like I said.
It probably has something to do with your computer. For some reason, some processes automatically bring the CPU usage up to 100%, no matter if the CPU is a 233mhz Pentium 1 or a 1.2 Ghz AMD Thunderbird. Situations such as connecting your computer to your network shoots the CPU usage level to 100%, no matter what else you are doing with the computer at the time. When the CPU usage reached 100%, you are effectively frozen until the process is completed. Browser behavior can make it become a CPU process hog if it has to download a lot of graphics from one page.
Try deleting your temporary internet files. Go to:
START
PROGRAMS
ACCESSORIES
SYSTEM TOOLS
DISK CLEANUP
Make sure the Temporary Internet Files box is checked (actually I’d check all of them unless you know of some reason you wouldn’t want to).
If the problem persists I’d then Defragment your harddrive (same place as above except select Disk Defragmenter). If your drive is full and Windows can only make a small swap file then your system will pause while it swaps info in and out of the swap file (if the file is large it just dumps once and it’s done). A full defrag of your harddrive can take several hours so do it when you have the time (you can stop the defrag at any point during the process).
In my experience that fixes about 90 percent of the people I see with that problem. If the problem still persists go to this site and run any available updates for windows you can find.
If that doesn’t work it’s time to call a techy to have a close look at the PC (the NIC may be flaking out or something).
Thanks, whack, but I’ve been deleting scads of temp. internet files and defragging like nobody’s business the past couple of weeks with no luck. I will check out the updates, though.
Try to End Task everything and see if the problem continues.
Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and a Close Program window should appear. Highlight something in the list and click on End Task. Hot CTRL-ALT-DEL again and selct another item from the list and End Task that. Keep doing this till everything is gone from the list EXCEPT for Explorer and Systray. (NOTE: Some items won’t end immediately and some will pop up a box saying they aren’t responding…this is normal…just keep telling the PC to End Task everything).
This will determine if any other programs are doing something strange.
Also, check to see that your harddrive isn’t too filled. The swap file thing can still be an issue if the drive is mostly filled. Try to leave a minimum of 250 MB of unfragmented space available on your harddrive. You machine will work with much less than that but performance may start to degrade.
Finally, remove any browsers you don’t need or use. They don’t always play nice together since each tries to force primacy over the others. Pick a browser you can live with and then go to Add/Remove Programs and get rid of the rest.