simsimt 0 Light Poster

Hello all,

Having a forum for troubleshooting browers issues is really much appreciated. I hope that we can add to this site as much as we gain.

Well, I'm having a very annoying problem with IE6 which seems to affect OE6, MSN messenger & other apps as well.

The problem is that when I open IE6, types in a website URL or choose it from my favourites, it works fine for the first time only & the site loads up as normal. However, everything seem to stop responding right away after half a minute or so! In accordance to this, when I type a URL in the address bar or choose a site from the favourites, nothing loads at all, & even the 'Opening page http...' in the IE's status bar doesnt appear. If I tried to close the IE window it won't, & I get 'This program is not responding' error message.

This problem happens particularly with Microsoft applications & not IE specifically. I mean, when I try to run either of OE6, MSN messenger 7.5, or Windows Messenger, everyone of these work fine for the first time then stop responding! And the weird thing is that other applications like Acrobat Reader stops responding too, which I think is due to IE being biult in the Windows core.

My Internet connection is fine, & I'm posting this thread now using FireFox without a single issue.

For troubleshooting this, I uninstalled Sygate Personal Firewall Pro, Norton Antivirus, unfortunately to no avail.

I followed up the updates of Microsoft glitch security update; one of them instructed me to re-install latest drivers of nVIDIA GeForce card, which I did but again in vain.

I'm having HijackThis installed on my PC, but I would wait to a response from you guys before I might submit it's output. Someone maybe seeing something I don't see at the moment. :)

Thank in advance.

Dani AI

Generated

— the “works once, then hangs” pattern usually points to either an IE add-on/toolbar or a problem in the Windows networking/hooks layer (LSP/Winsock) rather than the video driver. Because Firefox works and several Microsoft apps freeze after a first successful run, focus on add-ons, leftover AV/firewall hooks, and the network stack first.

Quick checks to run (create a System Restore point before making system changes):

Run IE with add-ons disabled:

Start → Run → type: iexplore.exe -extoff

If IE stays responsive, hunt down toolbars/BHOs (remove via Control Panel or inspect with HijackThis/Autoruns). If it still hangs, try Safe Mode with Networking to see whether a third-party service is involved.

Reset the network layer (requires an elevated command prompt) and reboot:

netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt

Look for system-level causes: check Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc) for errors at the time of the hang, scan with an up-to-date anti-malware tool (Malwarebytes/Spybot or similar), and run sfc /scannow to repair protected system files (Windows CD may be required).

If hangs affect other programs (Acrobat, MSN), inspect what DLLs/hooks are loaded into the offending processes with Process Explorer or Autoruns to find non-Microsoft modules. Creating a fresh Windows user account will quickly show if the problem is profile-specific. If the above fails, consider repairing/reinstalling IE or performing an in-place OS repair; back up data first.

These steps allow narrowing the fault (add-on vs. network hook vs. system corruption) and will produce diagnostic logs (Event Viewer, HijackThis, Autoruns) that make targeted fixes possible.

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