I open a web page - it starts to load - it stops downloading - I click on the stop button - click on the address bar and hit enter - the page downloads quite quickly.

Consistent problem. First try the page won't load. Second try, or THIRD, it loads quickly.

Any suggestions?

OS = Win2k.
Browser = Firefox.
Broadband = 512/256 shaped.
Speedtest = OK.

many thanksTry IE. Same thing?Common scenario is where I do a search using Google. Then I look down the page of results and rapidly center click all that might be useful (so they open in a new tab and I don't loose my original search). Maybe I center click about 5 results. I would expect this to cause some slowness since I am asking for multiple pages - naturally. However, instead of slow I get nothing unless I go back and do stop/start. Even if I go away and do my washing and come back 2 hours later - nothing. Then I reload and bingo, up she comes.

The above procedure used to work fine when I first got broadband. Now it is getting gradually worse. Could it be that every web page now has a large volume of advertising attached to it at the front, so the adverts have to be downloaded first and maybe they are big files?

I can't REPLICATE this with IE because center click is not functional (at least not in the IE 6 that I am using).Center click - is that the middle button of a three button mouse (or the scroll wheel)?it's the scroll wheel - click on a link with the scroll wheel and the link opens in a new tab

if the tab is no use to you - click the tab with the scroll wheel and it is closed

saves a lot of time by KEEPING the first page open while you look at the second page1. Sounds normal to me (of course I'm on a very old slow computer). If you have an old computer (slow and not much memory), running a software firewall, real-time antivirus, real-time anti-malware, browser blocking blacklisted sites, or add-ons dynamically checking links against some online list; it's going to take some time. I wonder WHETHER one end or other of the link "times out" waiting for the page request to complete.

I assume the second time you request the page, most of the domain names have already been resolved to their IPv4 (or IPv6) addresses, and much of the page has already been downloaded to your browser cache. So you're pretty much good to go.

I'm not a web programmer, nor do I run a web site; so this is all conjecture on my part...

2. Try repeating your experiment after booting to "Safe Mode with Networking" if Windows 2000 supports that. That should leave you with a relatively clean system (no or very little security software running). You might also invoke Firefox in its own safe mode (all add-ons disabled). How does it perform on your end without the extra hoops to jump through ?

If you're behind a "home router" with a firmware firewall component, you should be protected from port scanners.

3. How modern and fast is your computer? (Just CURIOUS. I don't think I can solve your problem.)
a. CPU (and clock speed)
b. System RAM (MB or GB)

4. I wonder if your ISP runs a "proxy server" and is caching the pages you requested before passing them on to you. You may be waiting on them for the first retrieval of the data. (Or waiting on their DNS servers to resolve the domain names.)