Windows Vista Browser stops working after a while

Never had browser problems with Vista till i changed from AVG to Avast after a few weeks of my browsers not working and my mail not working i tracked it to Avast's connection settings.
I changed the connection setting to direct connection and my browsers and mail work fine now,Explorer/Google Chrome/Firefox
 
After reviewing the posts in this thread, I would like to contribute the following:

  • This problem may not be limited to Windows Vista and may in fact be a hardware problem.
  • This is a known problem with faulty DSL connections and I have seen it occur in Windows XP environments with faulty DSL.
  • This is may be a symptom of a defective DSL modem or router.
  • This may (very unlikely) be a problem with bad cabling, cat5 or cat6, between devices.
  • To eliminate the possibility of a problem with the router, try updating the firmware of the router. Contact the router manufacturer for instructions on how to do this.
Possible solutions:

  • To eliminate the possibility of a problem with Windows Vista, try testing (if possible), a Windows XP computer on the same network.
  • If unable to do this, try removing your router and setting up your connection without a LAN/gateway and see if it continues to occur.
If anyone here has experienced this problem while using a cable Internet connection I would be very surprised. I have seen this several times with faulty DSL connections where repair work was required. You should be able to resolve hostnames with nslookup, ping IP addresses, and access everything accept for the WWW.

I do not know the technical cause of this problem but have seen it related to DSL.
 
Well for me the issue was definitely related to BitDefender. I use Cable internet, and the browser locked up. Removed BitDefender, and no more lockups. Definitely a software issue, and I can't even blame it on Vista. DitDefender definitely wrote BAD software!

Just to cover all your suggestions, I regularly use XP computers on this network, and have BitDefender on the XP computers. The issue is BitDefender + Vista.

After reviewing the posts in this thread, I would like to contribute the following:

  • This problem may not be limited to Windows Vista and may in fact be a hardware problem.
  • This is a known problem with faulty DSL connections and I have seen it occur in Windows XP environments with faulty DSL.
  • This is may be a symptom of a defective DSL modem or router.
  • This may (very unlikely) be a problem with bad cabling, cat5 or cat6, between devices.
  • To eliminate the possibility of a problem with the router, try updating the firmware of the router. Contact the router manufacturer for instructions on how to do this.
Possible solutions:

  • To eliminate the possibility of a problem with Windows Vista, try testing (if possible), a Windows XP computer on the same network.
  • If unable to do this, try removing your router and setting up your connection without a LAN/gateway and see if it continues to occur.
If anyone here has experienced this problem while using a cable Internet connection I would be very surprised. I have seen this several times with faulty DSL connections where repair work was required. You should be able to resolve hostnames with nslookup, ping IP addresses, and access everything accept for the WWW.

I do not know the technical cause of this problem but have seen it related to DSL.
 
Hi All

I've had exactly the same problem as many of you. Browsers stop working after 5-15 mins. Everything else works fine including Messenger, Skype, Outlook etc. My computer is a Dell Precision M2400. Only solution is to reboot my computer which is really annoying! I have had the same problem using both cable and wireless networks (different networks, one of them is at work, the other is at home).

I believe the problem arose after turning off Zone Alarm (not uninstalling) and installing Bitdefender, and it keept occuring after uninstalling Bitdefender again! I tried to roll back (using the restore points) to just before I installed the Bitdefender. This didn't help. Then I rolled even further back to like 8 hours before I installed Bitdefender. This solved the problem (at least I've had no problems for hours now)

I've read all posts in this thread and a lot of you suggest either Avast or Bitdefender as being the problem. Do these programs have somethin in common? What about some combination of Zone Alarm (even though it's not running) and other firewalls?
Another thing I should add, is that I tried tweaking Vista, so I turned off some of the really unnessesary services (like tablet pc etc.) and I accepted some of the changed settings suggested by Tune-Up Utilities 2009, including networks setting changes. BUT I didn't experience any problems after doing this. It ran fine for days.
Also I should add that I installed three printer/photo copy machine drivers the same days as the problem started to occur: KONICA MINOLTA 350/250/200 VPS, HP Color LaserJet 3000 and HP LaserJet 4200 PCL 5. Again the computer ran fine for hours after that, and the drivers are still installed now that I seem to have solved the problem.
Well, these are only suggestions and I believe the most in Windows Vista being the problem, since I still don't see any consistent combination of programs or single programs causing the problem.

Here's my setup:
Dell Precision M2400
Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2,4 GHz
4 GB RAM (2x2 GB)
nVidia Quadro FX370M
500 GB Samsung 5400 RPM disk (one partition)

Software installed:
MS Vista Business SP1 + all recommended updates from MS
IE7
Mozilla Firefox (newest release)
MS Office 2007 (incl Outlook, Word, Powerpoint etc.)
Tune-Up Utilities 2009 (30 day trial)
Oracle Calendar
Adobe Design Standard CS3 (incl Photoshop, Acrobat 8 pro etc)
Python 3.0
Python 2.5
ArcGis 9.3 (eg. ArcMap, ArcCatalog etc.)
Auran Train Simulator 2009
Cisco Systems VPN Client
Dell Wireless (dunno what it is)
DivX Codec
Eclipse
JMP 7
MS Visual Studio 2005
Miksoft Mobile 3gp converter
Nero Burning ROM 9
Putty
Skype (newest release)
Sophos Antivirus 7.6.2
MS Windows Live Messenger (newest release)
Winzip 12.0 (trial)

Running when the first crashes begun:
Not sure if Bitdefender ran or not
MS Outlook 2007
IE 7
Sophos Antivirus 7.6.2
If Bitdefender didn't run, Windows Firewall did.
If Bitdefender didn't run, Windows Defender did.
Skype (newest release)
Windows Live Messenger (Newest release)
Various drivers (graphics, sound, touchpad etc)
 
First. Mike, thanks for your comments, all I can say is, that for myself, I had exactly the same network set up for an XP Pro machine before I moved to Vista. I had that 2 years with absolutely no browser problems.

I also changed leads, network cards and the router (and firmware). No effect. If I go back to my XP Pro machine, there are no problems.

Do not underestimate this bug. It is real.....as anyone who has it will tell you.

Second, I am pleased to find those who say they have resolved the issue by moving BitDefender. Oh, that I had it installed! But I don't.

Finally, it might be "reasonable" to suggest that Microsoft Vista is not the cause, but if Microsoft had decided to allow me the option of killing "iexplore" or "firefox" through the Task Manager (just like you could in XP or 2000), then none of this would be a problem. The locked browser is just a symptom of a crashed process that you just cannot kill.....because Microsoft have decided we need to go back to letting the system remove processes. (Just like Win98....remember how bad that was?) That's why, after a browser crash, rebooting the machine is the only answer AND why it can take up to 20 minutes to shutdown (just like Win98).
 
Finally, it might be "reasonable" to suggest that Microsoft Vista is not the cause, but if Microsoft had decided to allow me the option of killing "iexplore" or "firefox" through the Task Manager (just like you could in XP or 2000), then none of this would be a problem. The locked browser is just a symptom of a crashed process that you just cannot kill.....because Microsoft have decided we need to go back to letting the system remove processes. (Just like Win98....remember how bad that was?) That's why, after a browser crash, rebooting the machine is the only answer AND why it can take up to 20 minutes to shutdown (just like Win98).

Do your browser crash? Like in not responding? Are you speaking about the same problem as others in here?
 
Greforb,

I'm not sure what your definition of "crash" is. Me, I'm really a Unix/Linux guy and if a process fails to respond, that's a crash. Technically, the browser is still there and working, but it does not connect to the web (email, ssh, telnet everything else is hunky-dory)

So, on that basis, here is some more news. Following on from my previous post ("if Microsoft had decided to allow me the option of killing "iexplore" or "firefox" through the Task Manager (just like you could in XP or 2000), then none of this would be a problem"). I decided to test my accusation. I know I could not stop the process in Windows alone, so I solicited some help with:

1. KillProcess.exe
2. Daphne.exe

I've wanted to do this before, but everytime I need them, it is immediately after a browser "stop/crash/failure".... and then I can't download. (Doh!!!)

So, after the last reboot (Tuesday) I installed (if you can say that about KillProcess) both.

Today it crashed again. I tried to kill firefox.exe in TaskManager. Forget it. I ran KillProcess.exe. It appeared to remove the process, but still neither browser would work.

Daphne was much more forthcoming. A zombie process was running on the old firefox.exe process number. But even Daphne couldn't remove that. However, it showed the process was in a direct tree from "explorer.exe". And, as you would expect from Vista, if you kill explorer.exe the system wants to get out - you have to reboot or log off. Logging off doesn't help. The zombie process is still there.

In conclusion, some may say I have to eat my words because I have killed the process and it is still a problem. I'm not sure I really buy that, after all, the process is still running as a zombie, and I really do not care too much whether there is bad coding by a third party here, I really think Microsoft should have allowed me the option of clearing out bad processes....zombie and all! (But maybe I'm just used to good operating systems ;) ).
 
Greforb,

I'm not sure what your definition of "crash" is. Me, I'm really a Unix/Linux guy and if a process fails to respond, that's a crash. Technically, the browser is still there and working, but it does not connect to the web (email, ssh, telnet everything else is hunky-dory)

Not sure if I got it wrong then. In my case IE or Firefox doesn't stop responding as programs. They just stops loading the pages and says: "no connection, try again later" or whatever. The programs as such still responds, and I can open and close them as I want. I just can't get them to load internet pages.
 
I just recently ran into this problem and was glad to see I wasn't the only one. I seem to have solved the issue by disabling the web checking feature in Avast. It looks like this was the source of my conflict. Since I did this, Firefox and IE7 are working fine...so far...
 
I've also been experiencing this problem, and others (like not being able to install programs that lead to Vista becoming hopelessly deactivated). One would think that after all the Windows versions that have been released, at very least Internet Explorer would work perfectly. Instead, it's gotten increasingly worse:
Maybe Microsoft fired all the competent professionals who designed Windows 2000 and XP, and replaced them with incompetent idiots. For how can two good systems lead to Vista, which is such a down and out loser? Why isn't Internet Explorer working at least as well as in previous systems, or as well as Firefox which is only a fraction of its size?
Vista is as if Windows XP was given a cosmetic makeover, while at the same time also given a lobotomy!
After using Vista for over one and one half years and seeing that all the upgrades don't effect any improvements but rather seem to degrade if anything, I will be formatting my drive and going back to XP. Vista was not an upgrade, but a downgrade to the equivalent of a beautiful looking cake filled with cream of maggots.
 
G'day folks

I've spent a fair bit of time reading this thread today and hoped for gold at the end of the rainbow - to no avail. Last night the browsers on my mother-in-law's Acer laptop, running Win Vista Home Premium, suddenly couldn't display any pages. Installed Opera to see if that helped - nope. Skype is OK and the browsers can get to my router using the numerical IP address. Two other computers on the home network can still browse the internet using Win XP. My mother-in-law said there had been an update of Avast - so I uninstalled it - seemed to uninstall OK using the Control Panel. Searched the Program files folder in C drive for an Avast folder and found nothing.

Rebooted - and no browser worked. Tried disabling the Windows Firewall - no improvement. Then went to Internet Connections in the Control Panel and entered the proxy address given by my ISP (the other machines don't use this), including using port 8080. It worked!! Don't know for how long, but I'm happy enough at the moment. Hope this helps someone else!
 
Not sure if any of this will help anyone at all, but this (so far) worked for me. I had this same problem and after a few days paid way too much attention. Today I've been using my browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, but haven't used MSIE today) for over eight hours. So far, no major problems. There were a couple glitches with a WordPress theme site, but I think it was their site, because everything else worked.

Facts:

  • When this bug happened, I could not connect to other servers on port 80.
  • I could connect to port 2082 (cpanel) for a wiki I admin
  • I could connect to GMail via https (port 443)
  • It was not a Linksys router issue, as others on my network had no problems
  • It affected all browsers: Firefox 3.0.5, Opera, Chrome, and MSIE
  • I tried two System Restores to no avail
  • I disabled Windows Defender to no avail
  • When this error occurred, nothing helped except a system reboot
  • I tried disabling AVG's link (web) scanner and email scanner
  • I uninstalled various Java updates
  • I tried all the ipconfig renew/release and netsh resets mentioned here and elsewhere

When I completely uninstalled AVG and rebooted, my system ran a bit faster and now I've had no problems for the last eight hours, which is longer than the 5 minutes to 3 hours I had the last week.

When I disabled AVG's link scanner, it seemed as though it was still operating. For some reason, it did not want to let go of that. It felt as though that after a certain amount of data passed, something would shut down and refuse port 80 connections. I don't think this is specifically an AVG problem, although they do address it on their site. (I'm sorry, but I lost the link. I'll try to find it again.)

No idea why. I am very sure that this will not help everyone. What's needed, I think, is a virus scanner that does not scan your incoming browser data. Good or bad, that seemed to help. A good friend of mine says he uses Avast and has disabled web scanner, email scanner, and p2p scanner. He has not had this issue, so I don't know if this will bring my problem back. We shall see.

Hope this helps someone.
 
Good post "rburke". And the data throughput may be important. Here is my latest information.

Firstly, I have changed ADSL provider and changed the router. The new provider gave a faster service. What do you know, instead of crashing every other day, I went to crashing every day. This was now getting intolerable. I spent many hours reading blogs/forums. People were accusing Microsoft of not ensuring that the OS was compatible with ASUS motherboards, AVG, Zone Alarm, Avast and so on.

Well, I thought I had tried everything, then I found the instructions on the Zone Alarm forum for removing Zone Alarm ....correctly. Not just a software uninstall. (I'm sorry, I would have posted the link here, but I did it about 2 weeks back.)

And what do you know, no crashes. Not one in 10 days!!!! (says he crossing his fingers).

So, 7 months of crashes and, for me at least, the answer is Zone Alarm and complete uninstallation. So, guys, I would recommend that you go back to software house forums/support desks and seek a complete uninstall for any software, zone alarm, Avast and AVG appear to be common culprits, others say Adobe Flash but Ithis didn't work for me.

I guess this will be my last post, so for those of you out there who still don't find a resolution, I'm with you in spirit....and if anyone wants to start up a campaign to get Microsoft to give Windows 7 for free to all Vista purchasers, I'll sign the petition.


[One thing I should add. My particular network is Microsoft Server free. Instead I have two Linux Fedora servers. I note this here just in case there is any correlation between what has happened to me and anyone else (but I do not believe it to be relevant).]
 
Well I've been having this problem recently too (Hp pavilion laptop w/ vista home premium). Found a post somewhere that suggested zone alarm may be the problem - I too did an uninstall (just a regular uninstall) a couple days ago and have not had the problem since. My browsing (and laptop in general) seem to be running much faster too.

Also did a general cleanup (old files, freed up disk space, defrag, let windows optimize the visual settings (turned off windows transparency, animation, all that process eating stuff)). Laptop is running like when I first got it. I'll come back here if the problem returns but for now, seems like there's a few of us who've had luck after uninstalling ZA.
 
I had this problem as well.

I got a brand new dell laptop in late January. I uninstalled the mcaffee antivirus that came with the laptop and installed Zone Alarm and AVG.

After that the browsers would sporadically stop working.

I ended up uninstalling everything and just used the windows firewall with no antivirus for a few days to make sure everything worked properly.

Then I tried installing Avast and I believe nothing else (sorry, little sketchy because it was a while ago) and the problem came back. I also tried Zone Alarm and AVG separately and had the same issue.

So, for me at least, it seemed to be ZA, AVG and Avast that caused the problem with vista.

I now have Comodo Firewall and Antivirus installed and have had no issues for weeks.
 
I got a new machine with Vista pre-installed last September and it worked perfectly fine for five months. Then, about 3 weeks ago, it started having this issue all of a sudden. I thought it was Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 update that did it since it installed on that same day, but turns out that wasn't the case.

There were two things that would happen. Either all web browsers would stop working OR Firefox would stop responding and refuse to close even if you hit "End Process" in the task manager. I thought for sure it was the same thing causing both of them, but it actually wasn't.

For the issue with all browsers not working, I tried uninstalling AVG after reading rburke's post and installed avast! without the web shield. Problem gone. My web browsers even work faster now.

Even with that solved though, Firefox alone would still stop responding and be unable to close without a restart. For this, I read elsewhere that some people believed ZoneAlarm was causing this exact problem. So I uninstalled ZA and installed Comodo Firewall instead. Problem gone.

Thus, for me at least, AVG and ZA were the problems. This was driving me up a wall having to restart my machine several times a day because of these issues, so I'm glad I got this figured out. Thanks to rburke and others for the help.
 
I just uninstalled Comodo AV but left the firewall running. I'm going to reinstall Avast without the webshield and see if it works because I think I forgot to disable webshield last time I tested it.
 
Hi, guys, it is a whole night we have been fighting with this problem. I also have router, desktop PC with ethernet connection and laptop with wiFi. The laptop just works fine - no problems at all with browsers, but the desktop PC had the same problem - All browsers stops after 2-3 minutes after rebooting, on a new install of windows Vista 64. All the app like skype and utorrent were working just fine. Browsers stoped working all of a sudden - exactly the simptoms which are described here. I've read all the posts so far and the final solution we have but it might not be sure ofcourse is that Windows defender + Windows Firewall + Antivirus /in my case NOD32/ do not like eachother - working all 3 together and this might cause the problem. All night the net had stop 2-3 minutes after reboot. It is a new clean install with few apps. So now we disabled Windows firewall and Windows Defender. NOD32 is still running and the internet and browsers are just fine. I have internet and browse the net without problems and without locks up. What I will try is to turn on at least the firewall to see if it will like to run along with Nod32. I will write if I experience the problem with the browsers again or this had been the solution for me.
P.S: Also had stoped the utorrent from the startUp and I haven't try it to run in for a longer period. From all this 4 programes now only NOD32 is working and browsing is just fine. So we have 4 programmes to combine and see which of them when working together are causing the problem.

P.S2: Before Vista 64 I used XPSP2 running with Avast, Sygate firewall and Utorrent. I had this problem for couple of weeks but as I remember we found an autopatcher from August 2007 with sp updates and the problem disappered.

PS3: NOD32+Utorrent = Browsers stop working. Torrents and Skype work. I suppose the problem will still remai if I even deinstall NOD32.
 
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