IE8 Problem?

Has anyone had any problems with IE8?

In recent weeks I've been having problems with my internet connection dropping, usually for short periods of just a few minutes. At first I turned something off and back on again and I was back on the internet - modem, for instance. But over time, I came to the conclusion that I was connected again because a few minutes had elapsed, and not because I'd rebooted something. I actually tried a different modem - one that I'd used for years until not long ago - and the same thing kept happening.

I spoke to my ISP three times and finally reached the conclusion that it was my router, which it may have been. I bought a new router and what was a daily, or several times a day occurence, seemed to stop. That wasn't many days ago so not much time has gone by for me to finally conclude that the router was to blame.

In the last couple of days I installed IE8 on the XP computer that I'm now mainly using (I don't like the display on my reconstituted Vista - drive died and was replaced). Twice yesterday, I clicked a link in the forum (any link) and suddenly my connection was gone. I got it back after rebooting stuff. Today, the same thing happened about 4 times - click a link and poof. I can see immediately when the connection drops because I have console windows open for the bots, and they indicate it very well. I found that rebooting things isn't necessary as the connection returns on its own after a few minutes have gone by.

Yesterday and today may not be related to the previous disconnections, as I don't recall such sudden disconnections after clicking a link. I've been using Firefox since the last disconnection a few hours ago - so far all is well. So...

Does anyone know of such a problem with IE8, or is it just coincidence?

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And while I'm here...

The reason I don't like the display on my reconstituted Vista desktop is because everything is big - too big. Desktop icons are big, borders round windows are big, text is big, everything is big. It is set to 1440 x 950(?) which is the best resolution that the monitor can do, so adjusting that won't make things smaller. I know I can adjust each little bit individually but that shouldn't be necessary, and not everything can be adjusted, especially there is no adjustment for the console window, which uses over a quarter of the screen.

It didn't used to be like that before the hard drive died. I'd recently installed an nVidia 9500 card in it and it was fine both before and after installation.

To get an idea of how too big things are, open a command prompt window. Mine now uses over a quarter of the screen on a widescreen 1440 x 950(?) monitor.

Can anyone suggest a way of fixing it?

I had a similar problem with random loss of connection while using SL...however mine did not come back very often at all (most of the time it simply did not until I reset my router). The other computer accessing the internet through that router almost never had the problem (though I believe there were rare occurrances where the connection would stop for both computers). I battled it for a very long time messing with my network settings talking to my ISP, looking for damaged Cat5 cable etc. One day I decided what the hell, I'll call Linksys (the router manufacturer) to try to get some ideas on a fix thinking it was something in my settings with a very distant possibility that maybe it was a configuration thing in the router. The tech knew almost immediately what the problem was and walked me through configuring the router while on the phone with him..........haven't seen the problem since. That was almost a year ago (might be a little over a year by now). Worth a try anyway.

On the Vista display thing. I think I know what you are saying. Try going into your control panel and setting your display to "Classic view". Then maybe play around with the font, icon sizes.....might be in the themes.

Peggy, you're a doll. And a gold one at that - not a paper one

"Adjust Font Size" did the trick - now things are the right size and the console window is wonderfully sized If I want any tweaking, I can use the individual tweaks, but the font size was set to the larger of the 2 settings, and changing that changed it all.

You mentioned something that I didn't mention - I've had 2 computers running from the router and both of them lost connection each time. I use the Vista for SL because it does display ok, and that's where the best card is. My av is unable to move during the disconnections. Sometimes the connection comes back before SL realises what's happened and the av is suddenly able to move again.

If not using IE8 isn't the answer, then I might well do what you did and talk to the router manufacturer, if there's a service for that.

Thank you again - you're a real doll.

/me walks off with a big swelled golden head.

No problem..............hope the connection issue gets ironed out.

I forgot to mention...

You saved me some money too I was disheartened with the Vista display and I was seriously considering upgrading to Windows 7, to see if it was better. I'll stay with Vista on this computer now.

Maybe you are having port conflicts with multiple instances of SL running.

If you really think IE8 might be the problem you could try Firefox.

I was just reading another thread that ports came up in - by you If ports were the issue then I'd expect the disconnection to be common but, assuming that the previous disconnections were due to something different, which the new router might have fixed, the current spate of them (when clicking a link in a webpage) has only happened so far since I installed IE8 and was using IE8.

I started to use Firefox yesterday, after about 4 disconnections which seemed to happen on clicking a link in webpage in IE8. So far I haven't had any more disconnects. It's too soon to conclude anything but I'm starting to get hopeful.

Wonderful!

I've had Forefox on my XP machine for a long time but rarely opened it. Now that I'm using it to see if it makes a difference to the disconnects, something went awry with the computer and Firefox is no longer on it. Bloody computers!