freezing when using net

mel123

...i had posted elsewhere but think this is the best place to get a good answer:

Have a Dell Laptop (first and last). Running XP Home. Have antivirus on it and its updated. No virus on the laptop.
When on the internet the thing just freezes up. You have to physically turn it off and back on, even ctrl alt delete doesn’t work.
Its not the eircom line, they have tested it, and I have also tried using the net with Vodafone mobile BB.
Can work away fine on other applications, its just on internet that this happens.

I cant think of anything else to do. PLEASE HELP before I throw this laptop out the window.
Any suggestions.

Feelgood

Sounds like an issue with your web browser...

What browser are you using, internet explorer or Firefox?.

Have you tried installing firefox on your pc and see if you get the same
problem?

yoyo

mel123 wrote: »

...i had posted elsewhere but think this is the best place to get a good answer:

Have a Dell Laptop (first and last). Running XP Home. Have antivirus on it and its updated. No virus on the laptop.
When on the internet the thing just freezes up. You have to physically turn it off and back on, even ctrl alt delete doesn’t work.
Its not the eircom line, they have tested it, and I have also tried using the net with Vodafone mobile BB.
Can work away fine on other applications, its just on internet that this happens.

I cant think of anything else to do. PLEASE HELP before I throw this laptop out the window.
Any suggestions.

How many anti virus programs are you running on it and what one(s) are they. If you have more than one this could be your problem, and you would get simular symtoms. Do you have any firewall software on it also?

Nick

PaddyTheNth

Have you tried looking in the Task Manager to see if you can catch any processes/programs suddenly grabbing all system resources?

eg Open up Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete), go to the Processes tab and click on CPU to sort in descending order. Fire up your internet browser (keeping the task manager window open) and see if you can spot what takes top spot in the list of processes.

A superior alternative to Task Manager is Process Explorer.

unnameduser

all previous other suggestions are good - try them

Your AV may not also scan for spyware - you could try Malwarebytes antimalware to start

IT-Guy

mel123 wrote: »

...i had posted elsewhere but think this is the best place to get a good answer:

Have a Dell Laptop (first and last). Running XP Home. Have antivirus on it and its updated. No virus on the laptop.
When on the internet the thing just freezes up. You have to physically turn it off and back on, even ctrl alt delete doesn’t work.
Its not the eircom line, they have tested it, and I have also tried using the net with Vodafone mobile BB.
Can work away fine on other applications, its just on internet that this happens.

I cant think of anything else to do. PLEASE HELP before I throw this laptop out the window.
Any suggestions.

I'm presuming you're using broadband? Try these steps AFTER you've tried the suggestions from previous posters, they're kinda last resort measures:

1) If you're using IE7 then reset it to "factory defaults" through Internet Options -> Advanced Tab ->Reset. If it's IE6 then try reinstalling, you'll need your XP home CD when doing this. Also you'll need to show hidden files and folders. Go to C:\Windows\inf and look for ie.inf. Right click on it and select install. After a few seconds it should ask you for the location of IEXPLORE.exe, browse to the i386 folder on your XP Home CD and it should be visible in its unexpanded format, IEXPLORE.EX_. Select this, click OK and repeat (using the filename in question) if it asks for the location of any other files on the CD.

2) Try resetting the TCP/IP stack. Your XP Home needs to be Service Pack 2 to do this. Open a command prompt, type "netsh winsock reset catalog" (without the quotes), hit enter and reboot the laptop after.

3) Scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one but worth a shot in case of an MTU mismatch. Download and run TCP/IP Optimiser from http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php Select your network adapter in the drop down window and click on custom settings above the exit button. Click "modify all network adapters" beneath the drop down window and click on PPPoE to the right of the drop down window. Apply the changes and reboot.

Are you by any chance using Eircoms BitStream service rather than standard broadband? The reason I ask is the only time I saw a PC freeze to the point of locking up completely, when connected to the internet, was when it connected to the BitStream service (basically dial up broadband, you could connect and disconnect like old dialups. Your newly created connection would appear in the system tray) but happened at random times, all while connected up to the internet. Unfortunately can't remember offhand how we solved it!