Why does Internet Explorer sometimes fail to connect to anything until I restart it?
IE has an annoying problem on my PC (XP SP3). I start it and try to go to Google (for example) and it'll sit there saying "Connecting" but nothing will happen and it doesn't matter how many times I try, it won't connect to anything.
I discovered that if I kill IE and restart it then it might start working (and then it'll work every time). It might takes 3-4 restarts (of IE, not the PC) to get a working IE.
Now I wouldn't normally care about this since I use Chrome but a lot of things use IE by default like Windows Update and the online help in Office 2003 so I would like to fix it.
Interestingly, my work laptop, which is running Windows 7 RC 64-bit, has exactly the same problem (completely different network and everything). I'm utterly convinced it's not a network or hardware problem but some software problem.
Edit: More info.
- It's IE8;
- No add-ons;
- Automatically detect settings is not enabled.
- It is set to "Never dial a connection".
Most likely you have the "Automatically detect settings" option selected in -> Internet Options -> connections. It goes out and tries to decide on its own the best way to get you to the internet. It can get hung up for a while trying to find a proxy to talk to. Removing this option will cause it to speed up.
Another couple of notes here is that if your computer is set to dial a connection it could also hang up like this while it is deciding what to do. Setting your connections to "I am on a local area network" can fix this issue too.
This does not sound like a browser in offline mode as it usually is kind enough to tell you about that.
It could be a slow DNS lookup.
If the problem recurs when you try to go to google.com, instead try going to http://74.125.45.100/ which is one of many IP addresses for google. This will bypass the DNS lookup. If the page loads quickly, then we know to look into DNS.
I would have to agree with the " automatically detect settings" option posted previously. 9 out of 10 times this is the culprit. Make sure this is NOT checked.