IE8 Hangs On Connecting...

Last night I updated the MS defender definitions and I am not sure if it was the cause or something else, in any event, later that night I went to go on the net in IE8 (current) and IE8 came up fine, said "Connecting..." in the Tab for about 3-4 seconds and then the connecting circle in the Tab stops, the progress bar at the bottom stops with 1 green bar, and IE8 is hung and I have to kill it to try anything in IE8 again.

I can open any page that is local to my PC without issue, IE8 works fine, all pull down menu's, local pages and such all work, just when it goes out it hangs. There seems to be no connection issues, at least it is not reporting any.

There are no error messages, Outlook and other programs get out ot the internet just fine. I ran virus scans with Norton no issues, ran MalwareBytes and no issues, and nothing in the system error logs.

I tried System Restore but it says it can't restore and "My system is unchanged", and it is, acts the same.

I don't have a second browser installed so I am sort of stuck until I can get another one on there.

That said, any idea what might be hammered? About the only clue is what somehow I was able for force an error in IE whne I opened a page on my PC and then tried to hit a link from it I got and error on mshtml.dll, but I am not sure if it is related or not.

I am running IE8 current on all MS updates, under WinXP Home, SP3 current with all MS updates.

Thanks

Reply 1 : IE8 Hangs On Connecting...

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-19411_102-518993.html?tag=threadListing;forum-threads finds that Norton among other things appear to be the cause.
Bob

Reply 2 : IE8 Hangs On Connecting...

Looks like I have the exact same thing, appreciate the link, it will save a LOT of time troubleshooting it! Hope they have a fix that is short of a broswer reset by the time I get home...

Reply 3 : IE8 Hangs On Connecting...

I have not tried yet, have to get home first, but on the Symantec site there are many many who are saying the Norton suggested fix worked.

The fix per Nortos is the re-run Live-Update.

A work-around is to disable Norton Intrusion Protection IE add-in and many also say that gets IE going before the fix if you need IE before live update from Norton or if Live Update does not work for you.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/NIS-Intrusion-Protection-crashing-IE8/td-p/406950/page/4

Re: NIS Intrusion Protection crashing IE8[ Edited ] Options Mark as New -- Message 36

03-01-2011 07:33 PM - last edited on 03-01-2011 07:34 PM

If you're experiencing this issue, I recommend that you run LiveUpdate now to get the updated IPS definitions. This should resolve the problem for you. Please let us know if this fixes the problem for you. Thanks!

Tony Weiss
Norton Forums Global Community Manager
Symantec Corporation