By turning add-ons off and on one at a time I have definitively found the having Norton Toolbar enable causes both Firefox 3.5.3 & IE 8 to lock up for about 10 seconds at any of the gas prices sites associated with http:\\gasbuddy.com. (one example: http://twincitiesgasprices.com/ ) Have not noticed this on other sites yet but wonder if others have experienced this on these sites or others. Vista Home Premium SP2 64 bit OS.
Hi afosawips,
What year and build of your norton product are you currently using (i.e. NIS 2010 17.0.0.136)? If you are currently using a 2010 norton product how did you upgrade? Did you uninstall any older norton products first or did you have the new 2010 version install itself over it?
There have been reports in these forums of people having problems with the norton toolbar in IE8 and FF3.5 after installing NIS or NAV 2010 over NIS or NAV 2009. Theoretically the upgrades should be flawless but it appears that it is best to first uninstall your older product, maybe run the norton removal tool once or twice, and then install the 2010 version of your norton product.
However, another possible problem is that you are running a 64 bit operating system. Are you currently running the 64 bit versions of IE and FF or the 32 bit ones? No norton product currently offers full native 64 bit support, meaning that no norton product is currently made to have all of its features work on 64 bit operating systems. For example, the norton toolbar is not made to work in the 64 bit version of IE8.
We should have a better idea of what your problem is once we get a little more info.
Pexley
Using NIS 2010, just downloaded at invite of Norton. But the problem actually seemed to worsen (longer lockup time) from when I was using NIS 2009.
However, NIS 2009 was installed from disk 133 days ago after uninstalling (as I recall) the trial that came with the new computer. Or.,I maybe installed it from disk over the top, or I may have just used the product key with the disk I bought to activate a year's subscription. If the last was a viable option, that's probably what I did. I remember asking about this in a forum to get the best way to do it,.
I do not recall when this problem began. It could have been 133 days ago, although it seems like less than that.
The OS is Vista Home Premium 64 bit. From your 2nd to the last paragraph, given that I do have a 64-bit OS, it is not clear whether you are suggesting that switching versions of browsers (to 64 bit) is the cause or the cure (or neither). Using "about" I cannot find anything that says either 32 bit or 64 bit in the product descriptor for either browser. It seems that it's different software for FF, and the same browser with a different launch option (which I can't access) for IE8.
Jim
Hi Jim,
Sorry if my last post was sort of confusing. I was trying to reason through what might be causing your problem. Doing a little more research it appears you must have the 32 bit version of IE8 because you are at times able to use the norton toolbar. That is just one less potential cause of your problem.
First, I tried visiting twincitiesgasprices.com and found that it takes at least a good 5-10 seconds to load, though it did not crash my IE7. Could you please provide some specs about your computer. It is possible that your computer is outdated or doesn't have enough memory ram and therefore causes your browsers to slow down or even freeze temporarily on certain sites. In case this isn't the cause of your problem, I am also providing instructions on how to do a clean install of NIS2010.
Now, correct me if I am wrong. Your computer came with a trial of NIS2009 and you purchased a 1 year subscription for it. However, you recently downloaded and installed NIS2010 over that.
Assuming this is true and your computer is fully updated (for the moment ruling out incompatible programs as a possible cause) you should first uninstall NIS2010 via add/remove programs. From there, run the NRT found here 2-3 times. Note that this will remove all norton products from your computer and the tool will ask you to restart your computer each time you run it (make sure you do).
At this point reset both IE8 and FF3.5 to their default settings. Finally, reinstall NIS2010 via this link. This should give you a clean install of NIS2010 and hopefully resolve your problem.
Pexley
Mine is working fine on visiting, do you have other addons installed? that may be conflicting with Norton toolbar. Well this thing should not happen. May be someone having more expertise in this area whould help you soon.
afosawips wrote:The OS is Vista Home Premium 64 bit. From your 2nd to the last paragraph, given that I do have a 64-bit OS, it is not clear whether you are suggesting that switching versions of browsers (to 64 bit) is the cause or the cure (or neither). Using "about" I cannot find anything that says either 32 bit or 64 bit in the product descriptor for either browser. It seems that it's different software for FF, and the same browser with a different launch option (which I can't access) for IE8.
Jim
First off, any add-on or tool probably will not work in a 64-bit browser because the add-on needs to support 64 bit. But to determine if your browser is 32 bit or 64 bit, run the Win Task Manager and click the Processes tab. If it's a 32-bit app, "*32" shows up with the filename to indicate it; otherwise (if it doesn't show anything) it's a 64-bit app. (See pic)
Also, Vista does include a 64-bit version of IE. See your start menu in "All Programs" at the top of the list. You'll see it there (see again pic)
btw I don’t have a problem on visiting the sites you mentioned; in fact, I don’t have even a 5-10 sec. delay getting to them.
mdoc7, silverhawk, others....
Actually the page loads very quickly (at least the portion visible without scrolling) and initially I can interact with links, or the scroll bar on the right side. But then, after it is completely (or mostly) loaded, and attempt to interact with it does nothing and the window title bar for FF (or IE) says (not responding) and then after 5-10 seconds, it works again.
I should add...the page you might get from the link I posted is different (shorter) than what I get. As a "gasbuddy" my page loads with a whole bunch of "favorite" stations at the bottom. In fact at the normal resolution I use, the "page" fills around 10 screens. But without the Norton Toolbar add-on there is no problem with freezing and with Norton Toolbar the ONLY add-on enabled the problem in paragraph 1 occur.
FF is a 32 bit app and the IE8 I am running is a 32 bit app.
For now I will hold off a complete uninstall/removal/reinstall of NIS.
Well, then you’re loading 10 tabbed pages in the same browser, and it looks like your browser isn’t freezing but is just waiting for response(s) from the Norton add-on. In such a case, there isn’t an operational problem per se, because one tabbed page probably loads OK without the “freeze”. I’m not saying this is not a problem from a performance perspective, but it’s one that is apparent because you’re loading a lot of tabs.
mdoc7,
To clarify, it's just loading one tab, but the page is about 10 screens in height.
Ouch, that's one large page content.
Hi afosawips,
If the page you are visiting loads a lot of "Favorites" then there is most likely a lot going on in the way of scripting and a lot of stuff that needs to be handled by the browser and your security software working together. I really wouldn't consider a 5-10 second hang to be unusual under these circumstances. The site could also be using the prefetch feature in Firefox to load your favorite pages and cache them in the background, which would be the same as opening 10 tabs at once, albeit without displaying them. Since the web site is so customized and it needs to fetch all of your preferences when it first loads, I think this may be an unavoidable pause while everything loads simultaneously.
It is possible to speed up Firefox by making configuration changes to enable pipelining and to then increase the number of requests it can make simultaneously. This would have a noticable effect on how quickly pages load and might help your situation.
1. Type about:config into the address bar and hit enter. Promise to be careful.
2. In the filter box type network.http or simply scroll down to the network entries.
3. Double-click "network.http.pipelining" to change the setting to "true."
4. Double-click "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to also change it to "true."
5. Double-click "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" and type the number 8 into the box that appears and click OK (8 is the maximum that Firefox can handle, so entering a larger number is not beneficial).
Close and restart Firefox.
Configuration changes (per the previous post) had no effect.
I suppose as recent responses indicate, this is just such a large web site to load- yes I do have a long list of favorites that I will shorten - the delay is inevitable. It does not freeze immediately though and if I grab the scroll bar and keep moving it long enough, it never freezes. (But if I let go to soon, then it does).
