My Browser Sits and Spins

[mbamike]

I appear to be having a problem with my browser. After a few minutes surfing the web, my browser seems to lose the ability to connect to other websites. It just sits and spins. I end up opening another window, not tab, to make the connection. Having to keep opening new windows in getting old? I have Vista Ultimate with IE8. Any ideas what my be the problem.

 

[rick262]

My browser (Firefox 3.6 I think) does this on the wireless connection every so often on my laptop running Windows XP Professional. I go to the "Wireless Network Connection" on the toolbar at the bottom of my screen, click on the Icon, go to support, and hit "Repair." That will sometimes take care of it. Other times, I have to go to the to the wireless router (I think that's what its called) and the cable modem and unplug them from the electric supply for at least a couple of minutes. Between the two, one or both actions seem to take care of the problem. I also try to keep my cookies, temporary files, history, etc. cleaned up. Hope this helps!

 

[trinket]

mbamike, yeah. IE is not my primary browser, but sometimes when I do use it I've seen this behavior too. Here and here report it as well - you could try some of those tips. If you're open to using Firefox, that's worth a shot - it's never behaved this way for me.

rick262 has a good idea in determining whether this problem is the fault of your connection itself, or just IE. I assumed IE because that's what you mentioned. But when the problem happens you could check other applications relying on a connection and see if they exhibit a bit of a lag retrieving data as well, so maybe it's your connection itself that's up-and-down. You can also get some ping tools that sit in your tray and do a summary of your connection to see if it might be to blame. Good luck!

 

[Yooper]

I have a similar problem.

A friend of mine who does Tech stuff for a living came over and pronounced my wireless router the culprit. According to him, they aren't made well and only seem to last a year or so unless you get really lucky.

At the moment, the solution I'm using is to stop whatever I'm doing, turn off my wireless connection at the computer, go unplug the router for a few seconds, plug it in again, wait 30 seconds or so, turn back on the connection and all is well again, usually for hours and hours.

Clearly that is the problem because it works every time. And I never have a problem if I plug my laptop directly into the system. Just wireless.

Plus I can always connect to my next door neighbor...so it is clearly not my computer...

 

[Corny]

Well my wireless router is running since ~6 years

 

[Daragh]

Have you tried switching to Firefox? It's much better than IE.

 

[mbamike]

I have just downloaded Firefox. I will give it a try to see if there is any improvement.

 

[mbamike]

Thanks a million!!!

I have used FireFox for only a day and I already can tell a BIG difference.

Thanks again!

 

[fhirinne]

Yes I switched to firefox years ago, although that seems to be becoming a pig. Chrome seemed like it would be a good alternative until google decided they wanted to take over the world (watch and wait, you will see, chromeOS is some scary stuff)

I hear that Apple's Safari is a nice peice of browser, but have not yet tried it.