How many browser windows do you normally have open at one time?

[mariner]

Just curious. I'm having trouble with IE and wondered if it is related to how many windows I have open. I usually have 5-10 open.

 

[Insomnium]

I usually have about 5 open and never have problems. What kind of problems were you having? Slowdowns?

 

[gittyup]

Wow 10 browser windows at once. How much RAM are you running? I usually have 3 browser windows open..

 

[mariner]

Hey Insomnium.

Well, slowdowns? Always at my 25Kbps connect. But the trouble I am referring to is a total shut down of all IE windows. I had another thread going and jaywalen solved most of my problems. When it occurs the error message says something like:

ieexplorer.exe has generated errors. the program will be shut down and you will have to restart. an error log is being created.

I was just curious if anyone else routinely has a lot of windows open with no troubles.

What kind of windows do you have open Insomnium? Are they streaming anything? News? stocks? music? I think that may be what is killing me. Or maybe some type of rogue java applet??

 

[mariner]

Hey gittyup.

I have 196MB but I try to control my process and keep them to a minimum. Also Abit BP6, 2xC366@550, voodoo3, dial-up connection, blah, blah, blah.

Just before IE shuts me down my HDD gets so busy it's just a buzz, for about 10-15 seconds. Since it rarely does this, I know I'm in trouble when it does

Oh, I have had up to 20 windows open and refreshing them one-by-one with no trouble. Thats what makes me think it may just be the code some pages are using (got that idea from jaywallen).

 

[Insomnium]

Right now I have 6 sites open that aren't streaming anything. But slowdowns do occur whenever you have 2+ windows open that are packed with Javascript or some other scripting language. Crashes can also occur when your Java Virtual Machine becomes overloaded with scripts that it is handling. As for streaming multimedia and tickers, i guess they can cause your IE to crash, though the worst i've experienced are massive slowdowns, not crashes.

The most common problems i have are flaky scripts that cause IE to freeze. The only way to unfreeze it is to hit ctrl-alt-delete and End Task for that IE window, which also closes all other IE windows which is really, really frustrating.

 

[Insomnium]

Your hard drive going nuts, huh? Hmmmm. When was the last time you defragmented it, if at all? I had that problem with the hard drive kicking up into a frenzy and solved it by defragmenting.

 

[BFG10K]

I usually have as many open as I need (between 1-10) and I never have any problems. Try upgrading to the latest version of IE.

 

[Ladi]

I have up to 15+ IE windows open at some points (256 ram). I find that launching each browser instance separately (from quicklaunch or desktop icon) instead of using ctrl+n or file>new>window great reduces my 'losses' when one window crashes, but it's fairly rare. Using IE5.5 on 2kPro...

~Ladi

 

[mariner]

Yeah, I have that trouble of the Task Mgr closing all windows. I have a thread about that in the OS Forum; you may want to toss your $0.02 in.

Is there a way to kill a thread?

I defraged yesterday. Had a little trouble clearing enough room - only have about 270MB left in this 2GB part. Soon as my PM6.0 gets here I'm gonna stretch this part to 3GB if it will let me. I may have to convert to FAT32.

Hey BFG10K. I am currently using IE5.5SP1 and have installed it 2 times just to be sure.

I'm really thinking bad code. Seems like you guys have about the same number of windows open that I have. Wish others would post their numbers.

 

[mariner]

Hey Ladi. I'm also using 2kPro, but only 196MB. I fixed my registry so that it forces each IE window into it's own thread, and I think that helped. Ctrl-N is supposed to do the same thing. Is that what using the quick launch/desktop does?

 

[sciencewhiz]

Try Opera 5 from www.opera.com. When I use IE, I usually have problems after 3 or 4 open windows, but with opera, I can routinely have 10 windows open with no problems.

There are a few pages that don't render correctly with opera, so I usually have one IE window open and then use Opera for everything else.

 

[Ladi]

For some reason, using ctrl+n or otherwise opening in new windows from an existing window seems to create windows running off the same thread for me, so that when one goes, they all go. However, I don't have much of a problem with stability with win2k/ie5.5, so this may just be related to my style of work (I do a lot of research, so ie gets put through its paces a lot)...

~Ladi

 

[BearX00]

From what i know. IE doesnt really open separate threads for each window. not like netscape does. so there is no way to really save yourself from having all windows crash when one does. becasue the windows might be on different threads, but there is only one thread for the base application that controls them. if one crashes and effects the base app then they will all go to crap. And more than likely your trouble with IE is just bad coding. there are so many bugs in win2k and every other release that you are just getting some type of exception that they never caught. it probalby has something to do with hardware configuration or possibly some software that runs in the background like the jvm or something like that. Dont know if there is any real way to stop it

 

[Zucchini]

atleast 10 without slowdowns on 128mb

 

[mariner]

Zucchini, what browser/version/sp, OS/ver/sp and are any background utilities running (i.e. CPUIdle, rain, etc).

BearX00, you really know how to lift a person's spirits

 

[Ladi]

Take a look at task manager's process list while multiple IE windows are running....every time you see IEXPLORE.EXE, that's a separate thread/process of IE. When one of those crashes, they all crash...I've ended plenty of frozen IE windows through the process list and through the applications list without killing all of my IE sessions.

~Ladi

 

[Gatsby]

It depends on what I am doing.. Usually I have 3 windows open but then again when I had my 21' monitor working it was up to 5-6.

Gatsby - 975

 

[mariner]

Ladi, I have 6 windows open right now. On the Applications tab I see them all. On the Processes tab there is only one iexplore.exe @ 26MB. My understanding was that the applications tab more/less showed threads; is that correct. Anyway, when I kill a non-responding window in the app tab it kills all of windows (never tried killing a 'responding' a window). If I kill iexplore.exe it obviously kills all IE windows. You are evidently not getting the same results as me?? Any ideas why?

 

[Ladi]

As above, I've had the best results by starting each new explorer window separately (launching IE again from quicklaunch or desktop). In my experience, Applications tab shows each window while processes tab actually shows how many threads/processes/instances of IE are running.

I just hit ctrl+n from within an IE window and found that while I had an extra listing on my Applications tab, I do not have a corresponding extra listing under Processes. By contrast, I also launched a new browser from my quicklaunch bar and did have another IEXPLORE.EXE under processes, as well as the entry under Applications...

~Ladi

 

[mariner]

Thanks for rephrasing that Ladi Sounds like that may be the answer to having to close all windows when one locks. May also help identify which windows(=web sites) are most likely to lock up my browser.

 

[BFG10K]

I'm not sure what the problem is with multiple windows. Whether or not you launch IE more than once or use Control-N, each window is a separate process. If one window crashes you can simply kill it and the rest are totally unaffected. Internet Explorer is not an MDI program.

Hey BFG10K. I am currently using IE5.5SP1 and have installed it 2 times just to be sure.

Well I'm running the default Internet Explorer 5 that shipped with the Windows 98 SE CD, and it runs very well. I haven't even bothered to upgrade because it's that good.

 

[mariner]

Yeah, maybe I should have stuck with 5.0

About multiple windows. When I have multiple windows open via Ctrl-N or clicking hyperlinks in existing windows, there is only 1 iexplorer.exe process listed on the processes tab in task manager. And when one of those quits responding, and I kill it via the applicaitons tab, it closes ALL windows (Ladi also has this happen).

But when I open separate instances of IE via the quick launch bar (as Ladi suggested), there is a iexplorer.exe FOR EACH of the windows on the proceses tab AND I can end the separate windows/instances via the applications tab without all of them shuting down.

BFG10K, can you close non-responding windows from the applications tab w/o closing all windows? And, does your processes tab show a seaprate iexplorer.exe for each window, no matter how it was opened? If so, our configurations must be very different (beyond the obvious diff OS: 2k vs 98).

Opening diff instances of IE uses up more ram but has allowed me to have more control over non-responding windows and they don't seem to lock up as often, YET.

 

[Ladi]

I'm not quite sure where all the problems people are having with IE5.5 are coming from. I've been running the same installation of 2k pro and ie5.5 since July or so with no problems, no instability, and no crashing. I initially did not want to run IE5.5 because of the rumors I'd heard about instability, but I bought my laptop in July and my helpful bf decided to reinstall/preinstall software for me (I'd grumble, but it saved me time and he's probably better than me at building). I have no regrets going to 5.5. It also ran noticeably faster on my NT4:SP6a machine (k6-2/233 with 128) right up until the system died completely for unrelated reasons. Any time the browser crashed, it was almost invariably bad code on the site I was trying to go to (I've checked).

Earlier versions of IE did allow you to choose an option to make each window a separate process (even with ctrl+n), but as far as I've been able to find, that has since disappeared and the current workaround is launching each instance separately (which really isn't all that bad, all things considered....right-click on link, choose copy shortcut, and paste...not many more steps than right-click>open in new window and loading time on the new instance can be reduced by setting the home page to about:blank).

~Ladi

 

[Mem]

I normally have 3-4,however I`ve tried 10 open,btw also plenty of ram(256mb) so no problems on my rock solid MSI K7T Pro board.