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normanmlFlag for United States of America

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Browsers slow on some sites

When I first start my system, or when it has been idle for a while, and I fire up either Firefox or IE, many websites, especially the NYT, Wall Street Journal and CBS, come up and freeze for some 20-30 seconds while the page loads. If I use browsers throughout the day, the sites that froze at first are fine and come up quickly when I either google them or use a bookmark. This is new to my system. I tried: flushing the DNS and using net stop and net start; flushing the Firefox dns cache. My downlaod speed is 48.25, upload 70.37. I can't figure out what changed in my setup to create this problem. Heretofore if I clicked on the Times site it loaded in seconds. Thank you.
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Michael Best
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How much memory do you have?
Check for memory for defects with memtest 86

Link:
http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm
When you start your system, it is because of services starting, A/V scanning, index updates and checking for Windows updates that causes a browser to be slow in accessing sites.

However:

(a) within 5 or 6 minutes the startup effect should be gone.
(b) the startup effect is NOT the cause of later slow downs.

Run Resource Monitor (admin tools) and let it run for a while. Now when you perceive a slowdown, check Performance Monitor to see if Disk is busy. Is it?  and with what?

Next, run Disk Cleanup. A buildup of temp files can cause this. Follow Disk Cleanup with Disk Defrag. Then restart and test.

Finally, scan thoroughly for viruses and malware.
Firefox and Chrome 'phone home' if they haven't been used for a while to check on updates.  They will do that several times a day.  It is really irritating.
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Folks,

Tried all suggestions. I keep the HD defraged regularly, but I did it again. Cleaned the temp files out. I had less luck with the performance monitor mostly because in many instances I wasn't sure what to look for. BTW I have 4GB RAM with an 8GB stick sitting on my desk waiting to be installed.

The startup freeze for both browsers last about 20 seconds, as I said. Then the site loads. I can reproduce this with graphics intensive sites -- NYT, CBS News, etc. EE comes right up.

I don't think this is intranet problem. On Roku etc things stream right away, not stalls. But clearly the interaction between the browsers and WIN7PRO/64's network handling are not right. I can't figure out why a well-maintained machine -- CCleaner every week, defrag every week, stripped down boot sequence -- why, suddenly, I get this open freeze with both browsers on graphics intensive site. Tried with hardware acceleration on and off. No difference. Flushed DNS, reset network connection netshell. PS: ran WIN7 memtest and all's well with the 4gb ram. Have an 8gb stick ready to install, but I'd like to find the problem with the browser pages loading before I open the box. Thanks again. Hoping for a clue.
So at this point, there are a couple of things to try and/or consider.

First, you can easily run System File Checker. Open cmd.exe with Run as Administrator and run SFC /SCANNOW twice. Allow to complete both times, close out, and restart. See if SFC helps at all.

If not, the next step is to run Windows 7 Repair Install. You need the Windows 7 DVD for this. Here is a Seven Forums Tutorial to assist you.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html
New Wrinkle. In FIREFOX, streaming video from CBS News site, the sound is out of synch with the video. Same site on IE and video and sound are fine.
Chrome and Firefox appear to memory hogs - reduce the number of open tabs.

Otherwise consider my suggestions above.

I assume Windows 7 64-bit and at least 4GB of memory.
Correct.  4GB. I suppose this could be a flash problem, could be a sound-card problem (Matrox 2010 but with latest driver). I'll run the sfc /scannow.
Ran sfc scannow twice. No effect. But good idea. I'm guessing since it clearly involves graphics that perhaps my problem is a flash problem. Makes no sense that IE would handle CBSNews video without a hitch, and Firefox can make the sound and picture sync on the CBS News site. I'd really like to avoid a repair install. Tried running Firefox is its safe mode. Same stuff. I wish I knew more about networking and browsers to troubleshoot this. I'm thinking of doing a clean uninstall of flash and reinstalling to see if that makes any difference. Any other ideas? I just have this feeling it's a simple thing I've missed. Only event I can think of that might have triggered this was a couple of weeks ago when I updated my video driver. Might call Matrox on Monday to see if they have any ideas.
I have not had a video driver slow down browsing on my own 2 machines or any client machine. In your case, since the issue occurred when you updated your video driver, that may be the culprit. See what Matrox says.

Flash has been update in the past week, so make sure Flash, Shockwave and Java are all up to date.
Checked with Matrox. You're correct. New driver not problem -- proper driver, no such problems every reported with driver update. Checked flash, shockwave and Java twice. All up to date. Firefox seems to be the culprit now. Sometimes NYT site slow to on IE but it always comes up in a reasonable amount of time compared to FF. Reset and refreshed FF. Same problem. But testing streaming video on many site on FF, there is no sync problem. ONLY on the CBS site does the video and audio not synch. Flushed DNS again. Same thing.
PS: Noticed three 1014 events in Admin log all from yesterday when I was troubleshooting. Here's my favorite: "Name resolution for the name https://www.experts-exchange.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded."
PSS:  If I shutdown, boot, wait till screen is painted and HD stops spinning, and try to open either the NYT site or Toms Hardware on IE, both freeze for 10 seconds, then begin to work. If I try this shutdown/startup with FF, the freeze is at least 10 seconds longer on each site. However, if I shutdown, restart, open IE, wait for short freeze to unlock, then exit IE and open FF, the two websites open okay. It's as if once IE breaks this freeze, those sites are okay....unless it's several hours between opening either browser then it's back to the same thing. CBSNews on FF simply won't synch video and audio no matter what I try. CBSNews work fine on IE. Other WIN7 on home network has none of these problems.
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John
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Okay, I will. Have to wait till Wednesday when I'm home in front of the machine to try it. Thanks for the suggestions.
@normanml  - Thanks for the update and I was happy to help.