Weird IE problem.

[ATIIsBetter]

A friend of mine has a Thinkpad W500. It's running XP and whatever the most up to date version of IE is on XP. When he opens IE, no matter what website he tries, it just sits there saying "connecting". While its doing that he can literally do ANYTHING else that requires an internet connection. That includes opening new tabs in IE and surfing the web with no problem whatsoever. All the while, that first IE tab is just sitting there "connecting". I should note that the problem seems to clear itself up anywhere from a day to a week. And the problem usually persists for about that long. Any suggestions?


Thanks guys!

 

[leSLIe]

well I know what is the problem... it's IE

hehe, well apart from a clean format / reinstall, Is the internet connection properly configured? I mean do you have a yellow question mark on the connectivity icon?
does it happen with some other internet browser?

 

[Snowknight26]

Make sure that everything is unchecked in the LAN settings in Internet Options.

 

[PTNL]

On top of Snowknight's suggestion, download and run IBM's Thinkpad software update utility and see if it finds any newer NIC, wireless, or additional system updates.

 

[jeremyshaw]

It's XP... the thing has serious issues multitaking, especially with IE8.
Are you basically unable to do anything in IE once another tab get's stuck on "connecting"? (like typing in a url wrong, to a nonexistant address?) <-- what finally made me realize Vista was still leaps and boudns above XP... if you had the system resources to run it properly.