Member Avatar for nanabegan2

Today I found on this site today that a member had a problem just like mine in 2005, with IE's address bar not working properly. I am having the same problem, and have had since Nov. Every "tech support" paid service I have tried can't solve my problem. I am now also having a problem with Windows Explorer too.

IE takes up to 2 minutes to find and load a page if I only type the in the address bar, but if I type the entire address, including the then IE brings the page up immediately.

Windows Explorer takes about 20-60 seconds to load a list of my drives and files anytime I click the dropdown arrow to navigate to a different area (like to save a file to desktop instead of in my docs.)

For now, this forum is my last hope, as the paid "tech support" I have used have instructed me to restore my computer to factory defaults, which I obviously hate to do...

Can anyone help? Please...

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by MidiMagic

Dani AI

Generated

A short diagnostic note tied to the thread: the fact that typing the full address (including http://) loads instantly while entering only www... causes a different code path in the browser. That pattern most often points to a name-resolution/proxy discovery delay or Explorer probing unavailable network resources — not always spyware or an immediate need for a factory restore. and raised sensible possibilities (local disk or network), and was right to ask about recent installs; the steps below isolate network vs. local-shell causes without destructive changes.

Recommended non-destructive checks (fast to run):

nslookup www.example.com
ping -n 5 www.example.com
tracert www.example.com
ipconfig /flushdns

If nslookup is slow or fails, DNS is the likely culprit; swap the adapter DNS temporarily to a known public DNS (for testing) and repeat. If name resolution is quick but the browser still stalls when the scheme is omitted, disable automatic proxy detection in Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings and retest — WPAD/proxy auto-detect timeouts commonly add a long pause.

Explorer/File dialog specific checks (common causes of the slow dropdown):

  • Look for disconnected mapped/network drives (red X) and remove them; Explorer waits on stale network targets.
  • In Folder Options (View), disable "Automatically search for network folders and printers" while testing.
  • Temporarily stop the WebClient service to rule out slow WebDAV shares.
  • Use a shell-extension tester (disable non-Microsoft shell extensions) or perform a clean boot to see if an extension causes the delay.
  • Check Event Viewer for disk or IO errors and run a SMART/disk test or chkdsk if errors appear.

If the network checks are clean and Explorer is still slow, run a Winsock reset (netsh winsock reset) and reboot. These steps narrow the cause without reimaging; the results will show whether the issue is DNS/proxy, shell extensions, or failing storage.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for jkdas

did you install any updates or install any software prior to having this problem?

Member Avatar for Stylish

Hmm. Could be either spyware or a hard drive going bad.

IE -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Enable Third Party Addons (uncheck this fella)

It may or may not help.

Member Avatar for MidiMagic

This sounds like your ISP having trouble with urls which don't have the http prefix.

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