Computer Related > Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Duncan Replies: 19
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 Thu 14 Oct 10 13:38 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Duncan
I am having problems with my PC freezing, sometimes with the message "Windows Internet Explore (Not Responding)". There seems to be no logical reason for this.

This morning the PC froze while it was installing updates, the only way that I could see to get out was to turn off the power. The machine subsequently booted up normally and installed the updates.

Sometimes when it freezes, if I get impatient and click the mouse what appears to be an opaque film appears on the screen.

The PC is a four week old Novatech running Windows 7.

Any ideas please?

Simple language if you would.
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 Thu 14 Oct 10 13:47 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Dog
Sorry to butt into your thread comrade, but if y'all don't hear from me ever again you'll know that my computer along with my house and half the street have been blown into outer space by the shear amount of flippin downloads & updates that my poor 6 year old MESH has had to deal with of late :(

P.S. I use Firefox to access C4P :)
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 Thu 14 Oct 10 14:36 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - John H
>> Simple language if you would.
>>

simplest method is to run the first three fixits here:
support.microsoft.com/fixit#tab3

Then report back.

note - "opaque film" behaviour is a design feature of windows 7!

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 Thu 14 Oct 10 15:04 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Stuartli
I had a little bout of Firefox not responding (using Windows7 64 bit) and found that eventually it would get over the hiccup (and the "opaque film") and work normally.

But don't/never turn off the system by switching off the power at the mains. All you need to do to achieve this is to press the computer case button for around four seconds to Shutdown the system.
Last edited by: Stuartli on Thu 14 Oct 10 at 15:06
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 Thu 14 Oct 10 16:17 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Duncan
>> >> simplest method is to run the first three fixits here:
>> support.microsoft.com/fixit#tab3
>>
>>

Done that.

Two of the three fixits suggested tha Yahoo Toolbar was slowing things down. I have disabled the toolbar - althogh I can't see any difference - and I will see what happens. I have pinned the fixit icon thingy to my desktop.

Thanks for the replies.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 04:31 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - devonite
sometimes.....if you press cnt/alt/del to bring up task manager, you can shut down unresponsive applications in the applications tab. if none are running, you can sometimes find which process is hogging your resourses and end them under the processes tab, it can sometimes save a total reboot or emergency shutdown.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 12:59 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Tooslow
I can't offer a fix but I can suggest a philosophy. In my (limited) experience of my home pc grinding to a halt it has been some "helpful" actvity which was to blame. I can only quote 2 examples. Many years ago I had a pc that ran something called "Bigfix". It watched out for updates to everything on the pc and managed them. The mouse pointer would move over the screen like it was being dragged through treacle. I turned Bigfix off. The other event was Windows update. On an old pc, it was taking an awful lot of effort for it to trawl it's way through what it had / what it needed. I turned it off and ran update manually.

Of course, that's the easy part. Finding out what the cause was, was slow and frustrating. So, the philosophy? Do not use any of the over exuberant, puppy dog software that jumps up and down and shouts "let me help you!". Add on toolbars - kill 'em. Programs that run at start up time - kill 'em (after first checking you don't really them!) Programs that say "Can I automatically check for updates?" -no!

No matter how powerful your pc, all of this useless tosh will eventually drag it into the quicksand.

If you find yourself there at least W7 offers some help - CTRL, ALT, Del to fire up Task Manager, select Performance and then Resource Monitor and you can see what's doing all of the work.

John
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 14:07 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - rtj70
>> If you find yourself there at least W7 offers some help - CTRL, ALT, Del to fire up Task Manager

As does Windows Vista, XP, 2000, NT4 and NT3.x.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 14:20 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Tooslow
Quite right r but XP and earlier don't have the resource monitor.

John
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 14:40 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - rtj70
But that doesn't really give you anything you could not get either via task manager of PerfMon.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 14:50 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Tooslow
r, I don't agree on Task Manager, I think there's much increased visibility of what's going on. You're right on Perfmon but do you suppose Duncan knows about Perfmon? The Vista / W7 solution puts it "under your nose" so to speak.

There are also any number of good add ons, such as the sysinternals suite, but I think Duncan is a sensib;e kind of chap who just wants to use the darned thing and isn't really interested in forming an intimate acquantaince with the inside of Windows :-)

John
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 17:41 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Stuartli
>>I had a pc that ran something called "Bigfix". It watched out for updates to everything on the pc and managed them>>

I don't recall the mouse cursor moving around in the manner you describe with BigFix.

The main user of BigFix was Evesham Computers (now defunct IIRC). The company estimated that its after sales service calls dropped dramatically as a result of introducing the feature and saved it a lot of money.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 18:11 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Tooslow
That's right S, it was an Evesham. The effect took some months, or it may have been years, before it became apparent. It certainly wasn't there from the beginning. But switching it off cured the problem. There may have been an interaction with something else. Who can tell after all this time?

John
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 14:53 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Zero
what have you loaded onto the PC since you bought it.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 15:42 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Duncan
In no particular order

Microsoft life Cam
Skype
Google Chrome
IE8
BBC I Player
CCleaner
Adobe Reader
Adobe Air
Adobe Flash Player
Microsoft Office
Yahoo Mail

IE has been running slowly, so, I have been using Google Chrome of late.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 15:50 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Zero
Ok

In no particular order then, remove them one by one, testing for a few days to see if there is an improvement till you find the perp.


You dont need to install anything for yahoo mail, use the web browser to do your mail.

Infact install NOTHING from yahoo. nasty cloggy stuff.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 16:29 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - rtj70
When it's running slow/hung, can you get into Task Manager or is it totally frozen?

I'd perhaps start by taking off Skype and iPlayer. Or at least killing the processes via task manager.
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 16:52 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Tooslow
There was a report in the (hopeless) tech section of the paper at the weekend of something in iplayer grabbing the processor, regardless of whether iplayer was in use or not. 'fraid I can't remember the name of the task. So, yes, good idea to start at the less reputable end of the chain.

There was a suggested solution but I'm not going to repeat it as it involved piling more stuff on rather than sorting it.

John
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 18:07 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - rtj70
iPlayer relies on Adobe AIR - so maybe that is hogging the CPU. But any recent new PC should handle a CPU hog of a process. Windows 7 is after all multi-tasking. It makes me wonder if there is some underlying problem with the build.

My brother once built a PC with a dual core Athlon X2 and it never ran correctly. It would hang when someone called via Skype and the webcam kicked in. Sometimes needed a reboot.

So I wonder what hardware Duncan has plugged in too?
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 Mon 18 Oct 10 18:09 
 Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding) - Duncan
I have removed the three Yahoo items from the programs list in Control Panel. I will see what happens.

I am now trying to use Google Chrome all the time, which seems to work ok. Doesn't this suggest that the problem is linked somehow to Internet Explorer.

Did I mention that I have installed - and removed - Internet Explorer 9 Beta? Would that make any difference to anything?
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