Microsoft Internet Explorer may stop responding for up to six minutes (833301)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 SP4

SYMPTOMS

Microsoft Internet Explorer may stop responding for up to six minutes.

CAUSE

This problem may occur if Internet Explorer or the Microsoft XMLHTTP COM object uses the Microsoft Win32 Internet (WinInet) API for HTTP operations. When a program or object that uses WinInet performs a POST operation, and the connection is closed or reset before a response is returned from the server the POST was sent to, WinInet may establish a new connection. The POST operation may be repeated, but no part of the body of the POST operation is resent.

This problem is likely to occur across slow links if the server-side connection timeout is set very low. Therefore, the server end may close the TCP connection during the time that the server is waiting for the client request to arrive.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, make the server timeout longer than the client timeout. When you do so, the client side closes the idle connection before the server side has reached the timeout.

Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 5 and later have a default server side timeout of 2 minutes. For information about how to set the connection timeout in IIS, visit the following Microsoft Web site to view the Setting Connection Timeouts Web page:Internet Explorer 5 and later have a default client side timeout of 1 minute.

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:9/14/2006
Keywords:kbprb KB833301 kbAudITPRO kbAudDeveloper