...let's see if i can word my problem correctly, as so far googling for the answer hasn't worked ; i must be using the wrong keywords i guess. Often when i am surfing, i open most URL's in a new window, ie right click and open in new window. This means i usually have far too many browser windows open. However this method has served me well for far more years and different versions of Windows/internet explorer than i care to remember. Now i use XP at work and at home (both are SP2), and now have the same problem at home and work. I (far too often) have situations where i open a few windows fine, then a.n.other window will open, but hang, and the blue 'E' icon in the taskbat is of a lighter blue colour. At this point i cannot right click in any microsoft-related programs, whether it's notepad, IE, or whatever. I can still use right click in non-microsoft programs, ie Hummingbird Exceed or whatever. Now if i close any one of the open IE windows, right click returns for a while. it's then difficult to close the hanging IE session. BUT this problem can happen if there's only like 4 IE sessions open. As i say i have this problemm at home and work, where totally different programs are used. Come to think of if i used to have this in Windows 2000 too, but only at work. Hope i've explained that sufficiently. Any ideas ?
if possible do an uninstall of explorer but instead of uninstalling do the repair option to see if that fixes the problem. also what is the peformance level at when encountering that problem & when was the last time the computers have been restarted??
hi ddp; the pc at work is kept up to date with the barrage of Microsoft fixes/updates automatically via SMS or something. Basically at work the 100s of XP pcs we have are constantly updated. As far as i know i'm the only one who has this problem at work. Plus the pc i use at home is only kept up to date via service packs, not the millions of updates that are produced. Home pc is only on a few hours at a time and is powered off at least once a day. The work pc is left on 24/7. As i say i'm the only person to have experienced this, i think as i have so much stuff running; it's the way i've always used IE. The only way i can keep a train of thought is to open multiple sessions until i have finished a piece of work or searching for something. That said i (for years gone by) rarely ever used to close any sessions down and spawn them happily until virtual memory moans. Work pc could be on for months at a time with all manner of stuff running. It's only IE that's affected. So it's 2 disparate PCs doing this, the same OS, apart from mhy work PC used to do this when it had Win2000, prior to blowing it away and installing XP from scratch. I get the feeling that not many ppl out there are affected by this as ppl always ask me why i open so many windows/rarely close them and are puzzled as to how i am able to work that way with so many sessions. But to answer your question properly, this can happen after only a few mins of starting PC, or it can be hours later. It's not a performance thing as i'd get the 'windows is low on virtual memory' msg. I do obviously get that msg sometimes, but not at the same time i have the hanging browser syndrome. This is a wierd problem and i don't expect to find a solution as no matter how much i've search i can't find problems like it. Very wierd!
Get Firefox. Works better than IE, looks better, more secure, and has a bunch of useful plugins that IE cant match.
i think i've found a solution, it's worked so far (touch wood) - Open an ms-dos prompt window and type the following hitting enter after each line. regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll regsvr32 Shell32.dll regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll regsvr32 Mshtml.dll regsvr32 Urlmon.dll or obviously do start/run and enter them one at a time.
just remembered to update this thead... that fix i tried in previous reply was typical Microsoft pointlessness!. ie didn't work. Shortly after that last reply i moved to Firefox - and all problems solved. months later and no more hangs. Proven this on a handful of PC's and Internet Explorer has not been missed
