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Yes, I just got this and hesitated. Once bitten, twice shy, right? Not that I got bitten by the original problem patch, which is why I’m reluctant.

colasoft ping tool gives a high overview.

setup pingplotter and let it run continuously. Then when you get the problem you can just open that window and see where the problem is.

Colasoft shows no problem when I have the problem. So the problem is with browsers rather than actual connectivity.

Weird.

silvatek, you could just have a slow machine – not enough memory? Do you have another machine you can use to test the connection?

cheers, Paul

My PC is fairly new and fast and has more memory than 32-bit Windows can use. The problem is intermittent and affects any browser. There are so many factors involved – browser, ISP, DNS, HOSTS, antivirus, firewall, Vista – that it’s difficult to find out where the sudden bottleneck occurs. I’m going to have to record when these events occur and contact my ISP to see if they have any records that might coincide. I also check the events log every so often to see if anything unusual is happening.

Last time it happened I quickly ran ColaSoft Ping Tool and it showed no problems, which doesn’t help.

Thanks Paul.

David

Edit: just pressed Ctrl-H in Chrome for History. It opened a new blank tab and it stayed blank with the whirly thing on the tab. Checked running processes and nothing was hogging the processors so I really do not know what is causing this problem. Closed the tab and pressed Ctrl-H again and it worked fine.

I just want to say that I’ve been getting EXACTLY the same problem where my connection stalls every so often for no apparent reason. It’s evident in either Firefox or Chrome, and I’ve been at a loss when it comes to how to diagnose this. I’m on the verge of calling my ISP (O2 in the UK) as they’re pretty good at support. Their own connection tool tells me that everything is fine, but I can have several blank tabs just sitting there spinning away waiting for something to happen and I haven’t the first clue what is wrong. Then the bottleneck will disappear and everything will get moving again and the web pages will appear. Unless I’ve just got impatient and closed everything down and only just resisted smashing my computer into small fragments.

I’m on Vista Home Premium up to date, PC Tools firewall and Avira Antivir. I’m tempted to blame the anti-virus, but I have no evidence to back this up. I’ll try out some of the suggestions in this thread to see if I can identify what’s stopping communications. Is it a DNS thing? I use OpenDNS so my ISP could easily blame me for that. Task manager tells me that nothing is especially hogging resources.