IE9 freezes

Over the last couple of weeks I have had an occasional problem with IE9 (maybe several times a day, a number of times in a short period).

The problem is that one IE9 tab, with in private enabled and AVG anti-tracking (I use about 8 at once, with skype and excel also running) - but I have run like this for months before I experienced this problem) - freezes.

It might be in Hotmail (outlook), ebay, Wikipedia, goldprice.org or anything. On clicking another tab, I find most of them show a black screen, some are frozen, and occasionally one is still working. After a few minutes (seems like a few hours) the problem usually seems to resolve itself, but recurs a few minutes later. I have rebooting and that temporarily solves the problem or leaving the PC for longer to rest and that usually solves the problem - at least for a few hours or a day or two.

Reloading a page does nothing - I get the blue spinning circle for a few moments and then it thinks I've done that (but no change)

The other programs I am running continue to work ok, including Skype. Internet connection is not being lost (I think)

How can I prevent this happening ?

Dumb_Question
19.October.2013

HP Pavilion dm4 1050ea - CPU i5 430M 2.26GHz - 8GB RAM- 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium

 

Greetings Dumb_Question.

Lots of variables there - might be a tough problem to troubleshoot.

I'm not an IE user but my first thoughts are:

1. Try another multi-tabbed browser to see if you can replicate the symptoms. For what it's worth I get similar symptoms with Firefox when I have multiple tabs open that are using Flash plugins.

or

2. Disable all IE add-ons, extensions, plugins etc. to see if the symptoms change - if so then selectively re-enable to try to find the culprit(s).

 

Hey guys, to add to Calibans great suggestions, you may want to reset IE. This is just a thought. Here's how : http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Reset-Internet-Explorer-settings-in-Internet-Explorer-9

 

Thanks for your replies.

I think I'll try resetting IE9 sometime - thanks for the link Nick

-> Caliban: I have been experiencing problems with Adobe products - eg reader telling me it I need v8 or v9 to open pdf files from the internet when I have patently got v9 installed, Flash player telling me either I don't have the plug in or my version needs updating (the latter message I suspect is spurious, spam, or a link to malware), when I do the update versions (downloaded and installed from the Adobe site). But these are only occasional problems and only affect the page in question, which I can usually live with. I do have Firefox installed on this PC, I can run IE9 without all the rubbish easily (if W7 is anything like XP)

Dumb_Question
19.October.2013

HP Pavilion dm4 1050ea - CPU i5 430M 2.26GHz - 8GB RAM- 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium

 

Hey Dumb_Question, if you feel you may have a malware issue, I suggest you read this: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407.

 

Not sure whether to thank you or not for raising the spectre of malware.
I am AVG free 2012 which I update and scan regularly. I plan to replace this with the 2014 version. On occasion I have also scanned with msert
This shows no malware. But I know that this doesn't mean this PC is free of malware. Another program may show up an infection of some sort.

I did not previously suspect malware...

Dumb_Question
19.October.2013

HP Pavilion dm4 1050ea - CPU i5 430M 2.26GHz - 8GB RAM- 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium