Why does Internet Explorer sometimes fail to connect to anything until I restart it?

Question

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".

Solution 1

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.

Solution 2

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.

Solution 3

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.

Comments

[John T]

do you have any addons? and what version of IE?

[Hafthor]

Do you use fiddler?

[Alex Angas]

I occasionally have the same problem but it's when IE is already running. Certain tabs stop working altogether.

[kpoehls]

I've had the same problem, however I must say I never tried restarting IE 3-4 times, I just restarted my PC & it worked every time. Still haven't found a fix. I, too posted on here but never found an answer...

[Breadtruck]

That is too funny, I figured I was the only one. It's been going on for quite a while with my computer

[Software Guy]

If you "copy" the url you want to open,... open a new tab... then "paste" the url in, and press Enter - does it work? I had a colleague experience a similar issue if he tried to open links in new tabs after an extended idle time... the copy/paste worked just fine, but the middle-click or right-click new tab options wouldn't work unless there was a restart of IE. Either way, he had the same symptoms so I'd be interested in knowing the cause/fix. PS in our case Fiddler reported the HTTP GET was fine, but no response came back (not sure if Fiddler was failing to really send it?)

[Jeroen Landheer]

"Automatically detect settings" actually works if you have WPAD setup correctly... Otherwise it will cause a delay only at the first visit of a web page, because it is waiting for a DHCP inform request to time out.