I'm not sure I understand what you are asking, but typical of Windows applications, there may be more than one road leading to Rome. That is, your experience may not be identical to mine.

Refresh doesn't seem to be as effective at getting the page to load, in my experience, as highlighting the address and hitting the return key. That may just be superstitious nonsense on my part, but it seems to work.

You're probably right that you can wait forever and the page still won't load. Prior to discovering an amateur "fix" to this problem, I would probably have ended my FT session rather than spend time fighting my browser.

I miss FT when it was faster. :( It's nice to know that I'm not the only one experiencing problems. I've noticed that whenever a page has those InsideFlyer ads, everything loads like normal.

aloha

Looks like we all have our individual approaches to resolving the problem of page hangs. Mine is to keep hitting the back and forth arrows on the tool bar until something happens!

I am reluctant to turn off or fiddle around with Norton firewall, considering all the nasty stuff out there. Nor am I thrilled about turning off my Spy-bot software or pop-up blocker, either.

Seems to me that since so many of us are having trouble with this hanging page thing, the problem may not lie with us, but with the server and its settings. I also wonder how many members (or visitors) have tried to view Flyertalk, and just plain given up, never to return again?

That's definitely what it is - the cookies from admt.com - if you block them in your browser, the pages will load MUCH faster.

However, as that's part of the revenue stream (I guess) for FT, you may wish not to do that, or if you do, to unblock them once their servers are fixed.

Thanks, anonplz. I tried it and it does seem to help. Now I only have to click the backward and forward arrows a couple of times to load a page - versus the half dozen times before I blocked admt.com. And as an added boon - so far at least - "Avenue A" seems to have quieted down, too!

Good advice.

I aim to please! :)

Below is a link to a website of the Network Advertising Initiative which allows you to set a "blocker cookie" (my term) to tell DoubleClick, AvenueA, etc. to leave your computer alone. Your system must be able to accept the blocker cookie, either manually or automatically.

http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp

This is not solving the problem for me. I opted out of both and I still can not load FT without mutliple reload tries.... I guess new visitores with Norton Internet Secuturity will probably give up and never discover what there is to see at FT and members get frustrated. As much as I find FT of great use, I am not getting rid of my Norton on this computer.

We have a tech request in with our ad company to see if their ad servers are causing our pages to load slowly...

For us, though, we're not experiencing any slowness on the pages, from here at work, or at home (on my dialup). It's possible there's some internet traffic congestion between us and your system, possibly caused by the increased traffic brought on by all the virii running around.

I have several computer here, all on dial up. The only ones that have the problem are the ones with Norton Internet Security. The ones running with Zone Alarm work fine.

For those with problems, have you tried pinging some sites to see what response times you are getting?

(To ping, launch a DOS prompt from Windows (on mine, Start->Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt)). From the DOS prompt, type ping website.com {Enter}, substituting the site you want to ping for "website.com." For example, when I pinged webflyer, I entered ping webflyer.com {Enter}. It responded with 4 lines for 4 tries. My average response time was about 54ms. I also pinged Yahoo and received and average response time of about 37ms. (to exit the DOS window, type exit {Enter}. For comparison, I am connecting to the internet using a wireless router to a cable internet service to Comcast.

The response times will vary, in part, with the internet connection method, so DSL may be slower than cable, and dialup should be much slower than either DSL or cable. You may need to try this at several different times (including a low use time such as the middle of the night) in order to get a benchmark. My understanding (and I am not a techie/engineer) is that the pinging process is entirely outside of Windows, so IE, Norton, etc. should not have an impact on the response time. If you're getting good response times when pinging a site and slow page loading when browsing, that suggests a problem with Windows or its programs. However, if you get a slow response time, that suggests that hardware problems (including an external firewall) or network traffic may be slowing down the transmission. Knowing whether the problem appears to be internal or external should help in coming to a solution.

Hope that helps.

TRRed, thanks for your help (off line) trying to help me.

One thing to note (TRRed sugested I update my isolation info) I have NIS 2004. I am not having the problem on computers running NIS 2003, on NIS 2004.

I also have problem running www.zone.com as many time the page freezes or wont load - and I think it is the exact same problem that I am having with FT, NIS is block some information from being sent back to the server and the lack of this "handshake" is stalling the load of the page... my guess at this point.

k-meleon seems to slice through the problem

It's b-a-a-c-c-k-k!
 

Okay technical geniuses - help me! My "Avenue A" problem is back - with a vengeance this time. I couldn't get on to Flyertalk earlier today - tried twice - because every time I clicked on "Forums" I got the "Avenue A" warning from Spybot. When I elect to block the download, everything stops. Dead.

The thing is, I visit a lot of websites where I also receive the "Avenue A" warning from Spybot (MSN and Hotmail are hotbeds of "Avenue A"), and I always elect to block it. Then those sites load normally and I go about my business.

Not Flyertalk, though. Elect to block Avenue A on Flyertalk and you block access to the whole website. Why is that? And can anything be done about it?

Flyingmama,

Several thoughts: (1) if you are working on a company computer, talk to the technical support and don't try any of the following; tech support may have settings in place to accomplish certain goals, but may be interfering with your browsing; (2) if you have not set a blocker cookie (see #26 above), do that; (3) you haven't mentioned what versions of Norton programs, Windows, and Spybot you are running (if there is a pattern of people having problems with Norton Internet Security 2004 versions, for example, that would help Dan and other to find a resolution); (4) after doing 2 above, try (a) setting Internet Explorer (or other browser) to reject all cookies from AvenueA or (b) setting your browser to ask you each time a site wants to set a 3rd party cookie (you will get a lot of such requests). I believe IE default setting is to accept all cookies. If the browser blocks the cookie, my guess is that you won't get the message from Spybot.


Here are some other general suggestions (follow at your own risk; consider setting a restore point (from within the Start->Help portion of Windows)): (a) consider deleting temporary files in Internet Explorer; (b) consider emptying the Windows temporary folder (this folder should only contain temporary files, but it is possible that some files end up in there that you need to keep; thus confirm there are no important files in this directory before deleting); (c) run general utilities such as Disk Doctor and WinDoctor; and (d) (the first thing any tech support will tell you to do, so I've assumed everyone has done this) reboot your computer and then go directly to the site (without opening your browser first, from Windows Start menu, go to Favorites and select Flyertalk); this is to see if you then still have a problem (one reason is to evaluate the possibility that another site you are visiting, including your home page, may be doing something that is causing interference).

Let us know how things go.

I've been having the same problems that everyone else has mentioned. I use IE6, Norton anti-virus, ZoneAlarm, Win2000P and SpyBot. The only way I've been able to view FT is to go to my E partition and reactivate Netscape. However, not is all well with Netscape. When I read a thread in a forum and want to continue browsing other threads in the same forum, the GO button at the bottom does not let me return to the same forum. I either have to select a new forum and then select the original forum or use the BACK button to return. This only started for me this last weekend.

The more third party applications you have running on your system to check incoming/outgoing internet traffic, the longer it's going to take for pages to be "cleared" for viewing, if at all.

Of course, but an Anti Virus Program, a Fire Wall and a Popup Blocker are all very common programs to have running at one time.

I have a machine that I use for testing with and it is very stripped down. With the only heavy duty extra app running of NIS 2004 I have the problem. I am sure other programs have the problem as well, but it seems to me FT needs to talk to their add people and instruct them that the page needs to load even in the popup is blocked.

I block popups at home, as well as all banners, and I don't have these incomplete load problems. The only things that don't load are the popups and banners. It sounds like something isolated to Norton and its way of handling those.

Everything is back to normal for me tonight! :)

I'm still having problems and un-installed my Norton to no avail. Will keep trying with whatever suggestions come in here although it takes so long to get in!

See my post #30 above. What response times (the ones in milliseconds (ms)) are you getting when you ping some of these sites?

Also, did you try deleting the temporary files (or increasing the disk space for such files) in Internet Explorer?

VERY slow, Saturday morning, 8/21
 

VERY slow and sluggish all across the board this morning, and getting worse.

Still very slow later this afternoon.

William

Seems okay now---4:28 PM Eastern time.

bj-21.

Sled-like here at 1822.

While slightly better than this morning here, still way slower than usual.

I've got a 2 Gig processor and DSL which usually makes FT super fast. It's like someone poured molasses in the works all day.....:(.

I have found FT way slower than normal for a while now :(

It has been very slow to connect and load pages today and the past few days. I have cable broadband and other sites were loading just fine. Patience is not a virtue--I want my FlyerTalk! :D

It has been very slow to connect and load pages, off and on, today and the past few days. I have cable broadband and other sites were loading just fine. Patience is not a virtue--I want my FlyerTalk! :D

Sunday morning. Still VERY, VERY arthritic.
Taking almost a minute to load this reply page.

one of the two servers that the FlyerTalk board uses, fails to connect. See this thread .

I trust that dan can fix it, once being back at work on Monday.

Maybe we should rename the Flyertalk to Slowtribaltalk ;) .

I have had tribalfusion blocked for a long time.

This is something different, I suspect.

Too bad there is not a way for someone to monitor this on weekends :(

Very slow for me also today. Takes about 10-15 seconds between pages for the screen just to change. Then about 5-10 more for it to load. All other sites work fine. Whats going on? :confused:

Painfully slow....

Some of the site is as slow as I have ever seen it (7:15pm PDT on Sunday night) short of simply timing out.

I have also had several people report to me that they can't connect at all.

This page takes about a minute or so to load.

OMNI pages are over a minute in loading.

The rest of the site is crawling only ever so slightly less slowly.

Curious: Does FT not get monitored by someone from Webflyer on call over the weekends?

7:40 PM PDT on Sunday and I am getting timeouts and extremely slow loading. This is the 3rd weekend in a row that I've had this problem. I e-mailed FT Tech Support 2 weeks ago and they replied that there were no known problems over that weekend. This is the only site giving me problems. Speedtest shows I'm downloading from the internet at 1.3 mbs so it's not my ISP.

The slow speed this weekend has evidently discouraged a lot of FT posters. The DL Forum is usually quite active on Sunday but today has been like a ghost town.