Over the last two days, I noticed sometimes it would take 10 seconds or more for the http://dedicateddestiny.dkpsystem.com website to come up. By come up I mean the little hamster would run in its wheel on the web browser and nothing would come up.

This morning (just now) it was really bad where even after waiting over a minute, IE still says "connecting". Thinking there was a problem wiht the server, I tried to connect to www.dkpsystem.com which came right up.

So what I can I do to figure out why the website just doesn't seem to be loading right now, and why there is a noticeably delay other times?

Stay away from IE. The site works so much better with Firefox. I've advised my entire guild to not use IE with our site. It seems to have problems handling the background layers, formatting, and a slew of other issues. See if Firefox helps your load times.


Anthrax

Thank you for the response, but I have no desire to run a seperate web browser just for the guild site. In theory the guild site should be coded to work with any main stream web browser.
IE 7 works just fine for me everywhere else.

Actually, Firefox performs better in almost all areas when it comes to web browsing over IE7. Microsoft is late to the game with their updated web browsing interface and it will take them some time to get the kinks out. You will eventually come across other layered sites and massive micro imbedded images that will give you issues with IE7. Give it a try for 3 days, see if you don't get an improvement from Firefox, but I will promise you that dkpsystem.com sites run better with Firefox.

Anthrax

I am IT professional and have used Firefox off and on over the years, including the current version. I don't care for the interface as much as I do for IE, nor do I think Firefox is noticeably faster on most of the sites I go to.

I don't want to loose sight of my original post which was web pages just not loading at all. Chops/anyone what can I do to troubleshoot what is going on next time?

I have found this to be another bug with IE7. If the website bugs out on you, and doesn't load. You must totally close all IE tabs and windows. Then re-open and try to access the site again. 95% of the time you will be able to access the site. This is a documented bug that was discussed about 2 weeks ago, I do not believe Chops has found out why it happens. Also, I believe there is a cookie management issue with IE7. You will get website hangs if you leave the website unactive for around 10+ minutes. So lets say your writing a big post, or walk away from the computer for a few. It seems to get hung on authentication, something I believe Chops hasn't had a chance to look into.

Anthrax

And dude, the IT professional comment. Lame. I bet most of us are IT professionals.....

This comment was helpful. Now that I know it is a bug being looked into, I can go on about my business.

Sorry you think the IT professional comment was lame. I was trying to state that I have a clue, and just don't care for Firefox, so you didn't waste any more time trying to convince me to use it. I have been down that road before and was trying to avoid it.

There is an intermittent issue with DKPSystem.com sites and IE7. Unfortunately, I've not been able to reproduce it myself, but I continue to try. It seems to have something to do with the Browser "forgetting" the state of a connection.

It seems like at some point a connection between the browser and the server breaks, but IE still thinks the connection is open, and keeps talking, but the server is already not listening. When this happens, IE just sits there until it figures out that the server's been ignoring it and the connection is closed. The solution is usually to close the browser altogether (forcing it to forget its conversation) and reopen it, and viola, the site comes up.

I have not yet been able to determine if this is something with the server or with IE7, but it is a problem exclusive to IE7.

From a technical perspective, the problem is so intermittent, and there's nothing identifying about the packets or state of the browser (and that I can't reproduce it), it's been a huge thorn in my side trying to determine what's going on. (And I can't seem to find anyone with a similar problem elsewhere)

What I CAN tell you is that IE and Microsoft have been huge with giving me problems, requiring little hacks on the server configuration to accommodate IE's undocumented quirks.

So, my apologies for the slow loading times in IE7, and I recognize that all websites should work in all browsers. The DKPSystem.com sites do work, but they do have their intermittent problems with IE7.

--
It's all in the reflexes.

Two suggestions to try then.

The first is for us users and is directly from Microsoft's release notes for IE 7:
"If you are having problems with Internet Explorer 7 hanging, crashing, silently closing or other bizarre behavior, an incompatible toolbar or other add-on maybe involved. The fastest way to determine if an add-on is causing the problem is to run Internet Explorer 7 with no add-ons. You can do this by going to Start, clicking All Programs, click Accessories, click System Tools and click Internet Explorer (No add-ons). This disables all add-ons from loading in that instance of Internet Explorer. If the problem goes away, you can manually disable specific add-ons to find the specific one causing the problem. Below are instructions on how to manually disable a specific toolbar and a list of known incompatible toolbars that can cause serious issues with Internet Explorer 7."

Secondly, and this is a long shot, I know that time offsets in kerberos can screw up authentication, so on a whim I looked around at the possibility of a session being timed out prematurely and found this suggestion to check time sync on both ends (this is for Chops):
Someone's blog on the issue.
My home system is synced through AD's time server to NIST. It is 1:18PM when I am posting this.

OK, with the direction the thread has headed, I now think it's safe to put in my 2 cents.

I too have noticed the IE7 issues, and I've discovered a few KEY elements to the hanging.


There are 2 separate issues... one of which seems to be more prominent.

Problem 1:
The biggest one - IE7 can either "pop-up" your "Add post" page, or it can load it into a separate tab. I don't remember what I noticed during the "Add Post in new Tab" phase, as I now have IE open the "Add Post" page in a pop-up.

I have noticed that if I have multiple tabs open and am currently viewing a different tab (i.e a different website), while writing my New Post for DKPsystem's forums... as soon as I click Submit, I get a DKPSystem Hang.

In other Words:
1. Open DKPSystem Forum
2. Open a new tab and go to Anandtech.com
3. Go back to DKPSys tab and Go to any thread and Add new post (make sure that it opens in a pop-up separate window, not a new tab)
4. Click on Anandtech tab, and browse to a page or two.
5. While still viewing Anadtech tab, fill out your Post text and Submit.
6. You'll see the icon for DKPSys tab begin processing. Click on that tab to go to view the site. It will never stop processing and will just be blank for you.

At that point the only resolution is to close the whole browser window instance (other full instances will still function normally) and reload. You post WILL have actually submitted, though unlike normal situations, it will have been "unread" by you.

In this example I used Anadtech for the site #2... but in normal occurences it usually is www.DKPSystem.com vs. my guild's DKPSystem site. What I've found is that the site that I screw up stays screwed up, but the other DKPSystem site will continue to function normally unless I repeat the steps for it in the same way.



Problem 2:
This occurs with 2 dkpsystem sites open, but is more inconsistant. Open DKPSystem.com forum, and open your Guilds forum. Post in your guild's forum in a very normal manner. "SOMETIMES" it will screw up the OTHER site's ability to process normally.

Noble. Dude, you're the man.

I'm going to try to reproduce that first one today.

As for the second one....wow...that's wierd.

--
It's all in the reflexes.

I am also going to run the "no add-ons" version of IE and see if I can reproduce the problem. It wouldn't surprise me one bit it was an IE add-on that was causing the problem, and not IE itself.

IE is still VERY slowly 'painting' things.

Does anyone know what particular CSS/html is causing this problem?