Networks

Ask something
Question Locked

IE slow to load first page, but not Mozilla

0 helpful
24 replies

by danke

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

After coming back to place of work one weekend, a handful of my clients had called me with the same question- "Why is the 'internet' so slow??"
Yes, of course, the typical end-user question.

I've been at this for a couple of days and can not, for the life of me, figure this out.
On my end user machines, I fire up IE and the first site you try to hit is extremely slow to come up. I of course decided to throw out some ICMP traffic and see what kind of response I got. DNS works fine.. no loss of packets.. Huh?
After the first page loads, everything is well. But restart IE and it happens again. Every new instance of IE that is started does the same thing.
I of course opted to try out Mozilla on the machine (maybe a bad IE update was pushed on these machines). Mozilla loads perfectly. No pause on the first page... all new instances work fine.

A lot of you will say "Just use Mozilla." Of course I want to, for security reasons and Mozilla is an awesome piece of software, but end users as we all know are picky SOB's and they don't like change - even if the GUI is the same, but the name is different.

Anyone else experience this problem? I can't seem to find the button to push.

Thanks!

24 replies

by langlier

Also what kind of add-ons are used?(Flash, Java, etc)

And how many end users are experiencing this... a majority, all, certain sections?

by danke

Well I haven't tested all of them, but pretty much all I have looked at are having the same problem.

There is an intranet page that loads quickly, but as soon as you navigate to a external website, thats when the problem occurs.
Good question.. I didn't even think to look at that aspect

by christophe0241

Have you tried the standard scans? Many viruses and spyware programs load BHOs (browser helper objects) that are embedded into IE. If one person on the network has a particular virus or other malware, it isn't entirely difficult for the majority to have it as well. Also, what version of IE is this. Keep in mind that a lot of pages still do not render correctly and cause a lot of overhead in IE7. Also, if an infection has occurred, IE7 prevents AV/AS programs from unloading any objects of infection (BHOs, etc) so removing IE7 will be necessary to clean properly.

by danke

I don't give any install permissions to my end users (yeah I'm the mean IT guy) so there should be none of that going on.. Though I'll give that a twirl.

All computers are running IE6 with SP2

by jose.martinez

Try using ethereal to monitor the traffic on those computers.

Also, make sure you clear your temp files

by danke

Temp files have been cleaned.
I ran ethereal on a computer with the problem, and I got some odd results.

Seems that, comparing the packet capture from mozilla vs IE, GET requests are being sent to my DNS forward lookup zone for some odd reason. After failing a couple times (it doesn't even do an initial DNS query) it queries my internal DNS server and then goes about working fine.
Mozilla queries the DNS server right off the bat.
This means it's something going on 'locally,' right? I cleared the temp folder, all "offline content" cleared the history and still nothing. People use different home pages, and no matter what page it does the same thing, but only on a new instance.

This has got me stumped. My only guess is a bad update.

Anyone have any ideas as to why this would be happening? And why it would happen to all my end users (yeah all) at the same time?

by langlier

I'm thinking with the Get commands theres got to be some sort of virus/malware that infected IE and spread through your network.

by danke

My box was not "infected". I have administrative rights and all of my end users have no install rights. You would think if they got infected I would have.. I'm sitting on the same subnet. I ran ethereal off my box and when I fire up IE it doesn't hang, and it doesn't send get requests to my forward DNS server.
Plus the GET commands are formulated with whatever address you are trying to hit (i.e. GET HTTP://WWW.GOOGLE.COM
You think a hijacker would try to direct you to his site, not to whatever site you put in IE, and certainly not to your forward DNS server.
But my DNS server (debian box) isn't dealing with those requests, because it shouldn't be receiving those requests.
Name to IP resolution should happen first, but it doesn't. Only with Mozilla.

by ccsmith705

I am experiencing the exact same problem that you have described. I ran across your post in researching the problem. I have unloaded all BHOs and scanned for viruses and spyware /malware. My machine has a clean bill of health, yet I am still experiencing this problem. Did you ever fine and answer that resolved this problem?

by ddaggernow

IE very slow on loading (not just first page). Mozilla firefox 3 to 4 times faster.

No idea why ?
anyone else experience this Microsoft IE problem ?

by mgilbert

I am using IE7 and the extreme first page load time happens in new tabs as well as upon first page load.

Has anyone made any new discoveries in resolving this issue?

by jordie_fike

It looked like the original author was close to having this one figured out, was there ever a final solution. I have a client who is geting the exact same results right now, but needs IE for the Real Estate MLS software.

by rahouseholder

Have you checked your automatic configuration or proxy settings? If IE is looking for a non-existent proxy server it can cause this behavior

by ccsmith705

We have a proxy for the majority of our users and some, not all, have the problem. I myself, do not access the proxy, yet I also experience the slow load time for the first page in IE. This seems to indicate that it is not a proxy related problem.

by john

Hi

Did you ever manage to solve this one? I have a similar issue with IE7 loading files across our network and I'd welcome some insights.

Regards

by paul1sheriff

ok after trying many things this worked for me and i hope it will help you all my problem was
interceptor pado ..in manage add add-ons when this was disabled all back to speed ..however this may not be your problem but this is how i found it ..go to tools manage add-ons and disable them all ..and if this works then put 1 back on at a time untill you find the 1 .
i now have full speed back on internet exsplorer .....just ask sheriffdude

by dave12cd

Removal of a couple of odd looking Add Ons speeded this up and stopped problem.

by your mom 2.0

...was to remove the Google Toolbar.

Had the same problem; the first / home page was slow to load, but after it finished loading all other pages loaded quickly.

In my case, nothing else I tried worked, including reinstalling IE, deleting cache, renaming index.dat so it would be rebuilt on relaunch, various registry tweaks, disabling add-ons, etc.

I would suggest that you uninstall any toolbars (esp. Google's) that may be installed and see if that helps.

by joncturner

Thanks I went through all the same steps, removing google toolbar did it. Mozilla is still faster but I need IE for some apps.

by icscomputersa

Uninstalling the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer worked for me too.

THANKS

by matt.lilly

Thank You to Everyone that worked on this issues. Also, thanks to TechRepublic for supplying a forum for techs like us to post problems / offer solutions.

I removed the Google Toolbar and it fixed my problems. Only had 2 machines that where affected and the problems started after I setup new Domain controllers on our LAN.

Thanks again!

by tracy.walters

I just had the problem on a new installation of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Using the 'disable add-on' technique mentioned I found that the Sun Java plug-in was the problem. Disabling that fixed the problem. The add-on is listed below.

Name Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper
Publisher Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Status Disabled
File date Friday, July 31, 2009, 2:23 PM
Version 6.0.160.1

This discussion is closed to new replies.