Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of btrivett
btrivett

asked on

Upgrade to IE8 results in slow IE8 Browser Startup & Page Loads and Slow MS Office 2007 Document Access

I have two computers in my office.  One is a Dell Latitude D620 with a 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate OS with SP1 (I know, I know...), a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB RAM, and a 200 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive.  The other is a white box with a 32-bit Windows XP OS with SP3, a 2.6 GHz AMD Phenom Quad-Core processor, 3 GB RAM, and 2 - 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drives.  Both are well maintained and fairly powerful machines.  As stated above, they both have different OS's.  Both, though, have MS Office 2007 Professional with SP1 installed.  I'm a Domain Admin on our network and have full admin rights to both machines.  Today, I upgraded from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8 Full Release on both machines.  Prior to the upgrade, I had no problems with the speed of IE7 (although I tend to prefer Firefox 3) or with Office 2007.  After the upgrade, though, BOTH machines had the same issues:  

(1) IE8 takes about 10 seconds to load every time a new instance is loaded, and browsing is slower than with IE7.

(2) Any time I open a new instance of any Office document (Word, Excel, etc. doesn't matter), there is at least a 5-6 second hang before I'm able to scroll or click on any portion of the document.  

This might not seem like much... but when you're used to both of these functions happening almost instantly and when the problems are multiplied of the course of perhaps a hundred times a day, it gets old REALLY fast...

Running IE in "No Add-On" mode produces the same results.  I've tried some snake oil suggestion to re-register an Active-X DLL (regsvr32 actxprxy.dll) with no impact.  I've also tried reinstalling Office without SP1, reinstalling IE8, and uninstalling and reinstalling Symantec Endpoint Protection, but nothing works.  Oddly enough, my assistant has a Vista Ultimate laptop with the same specs as mine, and he hasn't had any such issues.  We've tried comparing the two setups and can't find any differences that might explain why I'm having the trouble and he's not.  Nor can I find anything that explains why I'm experiencing the problem in both Windows XP and Windows Vista.  Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Avatar of Badotz
Badotz
Flag of United States of America image

IE8 is slower than IE7. I don't think it is due to your setup because mine is slower, too.

<no_flames>
Anymore, I only use IE to test compatiblity; Firefox is my browser of choice.
</no_flames>
Avatar of btrivett
btrivett

ASKER

I prefer Firefox, as well.  Unfortunately there are a number of sites that our company uses (like insurance and bank sites that haven't been updated since the 90's) that can only be accessed using IE.  As I mentioned in my initial post, my assistant installed IE8 on a laptop that has essentially the same specs as mine, and his runs way faster than mine.  What I don't understand is why his IE runs faster and mine runs slower on two computers with dissimilar configurations.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of btrivett
btrivett

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial