Trouble connecting to browsers and sites

[wumply]

NOT KNOWING WHAT IS CAUSING MY PROBLEM, I AM NOT SURE WHERE TO PUT THIS. PLEASE MOVE IT IF APPROPRIATE.

I use broadband and run XP. My email is Eudora. Sometimes it simply won't connect; at other times no problem connecting and downloading mail. Never a problem with sending mail. Default Browser is Firefox. A desktop icon lets me access www.msn.com (I like their news and stroies, videos).

However subject behavior is VERY inconsistent. I can reboot and recycle my modem and it helps not at all. I reboot a 2nd. time and slowly things begin to work normally and then continue improving till they work just fine, often for 2-3 days. Then the problems re-occur.

Here is a list of what happened this morning.

I boot up.
Can't connect worth a damn.
I reboot.
I cannot connect to FF (FF is programmed to provide me to connect to Google but this function is not there--only the File...Edit...and Bookmarks toolbars appear).
I recycle my modem.
Still can't connect to FF.
But I click on my Hunger Site desktop icon and get connected immediately.
(That connects by calling up FF.)
So I click several bookmark icons.
Google loads immediately.
My dictionary: loads in a flash till progress bar is 90% full; last 10% is slow.
Techzonez: no problem.
Wikipedia: No problem.
Metrocast.net (My ISP's site.) Slow to fully load but does.
Weather site: no problem.
I close FF.
I click my MSIE desktop shortcut; www.msn.com appears immediately and is fully loaded in 2-3 seconds. (At other times, it has taken a full minute.)
Before the last reboot, MSIE would not load, period. "Could not find" msg.
I close www.msn.com and click my Eudora icon. It checks for mail (I had none) and it has loaded and run with normal speed. But way back at the start, it would not connect to my ISP or check for new mail automatically as it usually does. On a 2nd. try...often but not always, no problem
I close Eudora and click FF desktop icon. It loads in a flash with the Google address bar waiting to be used.
I close FF and try MSIE desktop icon. It loads in a flash.

Right now, things are working just fine. Note: When they aren't, often the progress bar will load 1/2 way (the green triangles go 1/2 way) and SIT THERE till I give up.

[I]WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT CAN I DO TO GET IT TO WORK FINE ALL THE TIME?{/I]

[Big Booger]

This could be cookie/tmp file related. It could be your ISP... it could be hardware related.

I used to have fiber optic internet (I moved and am waiting for them to come to reinstall) well anyway, I sometimes get the stalling effects that you are describing. And believe me or not all I do is click start, click network connections, then click the internet connection Icon. That shows the Internet connection status window.

After doing that, it will show sent and received bytes... once that refreshes and I see numbers moving along, my internet no longer stalls.

This happens with firefox and IE... So I know it is my modem or ISP...

I never had this problem with my fiber connection... and in fact I hate ADSL... it sucks... but at least I have internet connectivity.

[efc]

I just went through 3 days of the same problems. No clue as to what was causing the problem. The first thing that I did was delete cookies, history, and cache. Nothing worked. I finally uninstalled Kaspersky AV and went back to AVG. The reason is that Kaspersky routinely asked for authorization to make changes to registry. Yes, I know that in theory, that is an added layer of protection.

Also during this period, I removed Firefox (for the second time in the past month) and went back to a custom install of Mozilla. That turned out to be the action that cleared up my machine.

Something in the last couple releases of Firefox have given me problems. I find that with a custom install of Mozilla (I install only the browser - Not the email package, composer, irc, or the reporting packages), it is every bit as fast as Firefox and with the partial install to the system tray, it opens faster than Firefox.

If you decide to replace Firefox with Mozilla, be sure to use a registry cleaner after the uninstall of Firefox. Otherwise the same problems are likely to show up in Mozilla.

[wumply]

I will try Mozilla. Is it pretty similar to FireFox or significantly different?

Next question: I've some 16 Bookmarks in my FF bookmarks toolbar. Can I save those (or will they be saved when I uninstall FF) and put them in Mozilla? Does Mozilla even have bookmarks?

The weird thing about all this is that that it's consistently intermittent. I'll go for a day or 2 or 3 with no delays, no problems, asnd then the long delays return for a while.

[efc]

I am sure that there are lots of people here at TZ will think I am out of my mind on this issue. You might want to wait for a few more posts before making the change.

Yes, you can save the bookmarks. Go to the Manage Bookmarks section and export them to the My Documents. After installing Mozilla you would import that file.

[wumply]

I ran across this on the net...am trying it out...will comment on results in3-4 days. In at least 3 of my settings there was a mismatch.
==========
FireFox Speed Tweak

As if FireFox was not fast enough, below is an easy tweak to help render pages quickly.

Note: Only use if you have a high speed connection.

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

Someone else had added: "The maximum value for 'pipelining max requests' is hard wired at 8 no matter how high you set it."

[Reverend]

I ran across this on the net...am trying it out...will comment on results in3-4 days. In at least 3 of my settings there was a mismatch.
==========
FireFox Speed TweakConan posted the same thing here at TZ back in November last year. ;)

Speed Tweaks For Firefox (http://www.techzonez.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12614)

[wumply]

It's 8/30/05, 4 days since I made those changes to FF on 8/26 (see my last post) and I've had no problem connecting to FF or sites since.