Hey there~
I have a question that I've had my own answer to for awhile, but today it occured to me that I really hadn't a clue as to what causes this particular scenario while I'm surfing. If someone would tell me what is really up when this starts happening that'd be great.

Using internet explorer and having oh say about 6 to 10 windows open and either loaded or loading, inexplicably one by one the windows are seized by the " cannot find server-try refresh or go to setting and check for dns...." page, you know the one, right?
So what is it when this happens? I usually end up getting offline and then having to go through dial-up again, rarely the windows will respond to the refresh command, but usually one or more if not all need to be closed and then the re-dial-up thing.

So that's it. What is up with that?
My isp used to provide dns setting, but now I can't seem to find them anywhere, and so I'm assuming that to pre-set them is no longer an integral part of setting up an internet connection...

please give us the facts about your comp, if you don�t know them, maybe your son can help you out.

First thing is your memory size. Not your personally one, your comp. IE eats a lot of memory for every window you open.

Another thing is your harddisc size, because parts of it are there to substitute the memory of your comp. One part is there to swap out information of the memory, those information, which is not in use right now, but was ordered and has not been deleted (or opened and not closed). A secound part is there to swap out the stuff that is downloaded from the Internet (Temporary Internet Files folder). Makes it easier and faster to navigate through websites. But this part has to be coordinated in the memory. If the available free space in your memory is very low and not in use (you don�t look at the 10 windows at the same time ...), it is swapped out. This coordinating information can be swapped out, too. So if your comp has a small memory and everything has to be coordinated, it can take a while to do this. But your browser has a time limit for requesting a page, so although your comp could easily connect to another server, it�s busy with coordinating the memory, because he re-calls every information that is referenced to the window you want to refresh. Your comp tells you, that he�s got a time-out, that the other one hasn�t replied, although yours didn�t even start.
If you click refresh, but you�ve configurated your browser not to load a page completely again when doing so, your comp just looks into the temporary folder and finds: nothing.

Try Netcaptor and acivate Ad-Aware afterwards to delete the spyware. Sometimes I got 40 pages open at the same time with this one.

Configures to connect directly to a DNS of your ISP would only speed up a bit your connection, not solve the problem of the memory seize up.

[This message has been edited by BSK (edited 05-29-2002).]

does IE only open a certain number of connections to stop things timing out?

if your an uberbrower, try opera. its really good, and i regulary have 15 windows open at once without any slowdown, while with 5IE windows it starts to crap up mega.