Like many on this forum, for several months I experienced random connection failures and/or loss of connection while browsing with IE-7. (This did not happen on the two betas but only after upgrading from Beta 2 to VHP). Tried all the obvious things but nothing helped. Finally did what I should have done in the first place....went to the MS Knowledge Base and found two articles that seemed to apply (KB 936213 and 936214). These articles concern IE optimizing, resetting, and troubleshooting compatibility problems, and consist of many involved methods and steps. I ran through all the methods and steps, and nothing seemed to change. However, when I rebooted, a popup appeared stating that "Windows has blocked some startup programs" and inviting me to click to see list of blocked programs. The list shows 7 MS programs and Avast Antivirus. (If anyone is interested, I can give you the list of programs). All show classification of "Permitted"The results: My dialup connection has worked flawlessly with no connection failures or disconnects for over two weeks. An added bonus: The popup asking "Do you want to disconnect" when closing IE is back (it had disappeared on VHP installation).Don't know exactly what I did, since I did not choose to disable any startup programs when going through the KB steps. Only know that it worked and there seems to be no other problems. Any of you MVPs have any idea what happened?

Hi hasheran, The KB articles you mentioned list the general steps for troubleshooting IE7 related issues. The steps are used to disable add-on, third party drivers/services and startup programs. As a result, I think the cause of issue experienced before should be the following: Corrupt cached information. Add-on conflicts with IE 7. Certain third party programs were interfering with Internet Explorer or causing a problem with the Internet connection. Hope the information is helpful.

Thanks, Jason The 8 blocked programs are are all MS programs or apps that are part of Vista, with the exception of Avast Antivirus. I understand that these programs are only blocked at startup, but will they automatically load and function normally after startup? I ask this since two of the blocked programs are Windows Defender and Avast Antivirus. Am I compromising security on my computer by blocking them at startup? By the way, it has been 3 weeks since I ran the described procedures and I have not had any failed connections, disconnects, or IE stalls, so whatever I did is working. Harry Sherman

Hi Harry Sherman, According to your questions, please check the following information: 1. Yes, from a security standpoint, I suggest we do not turn off the security software permanently. In order to find out the culprits, you may refer to the following KB article:How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vistahttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135 2. If we clear the check box in the Startup Item list, the program will not load automatically. However, most of the programs can run properly when we manually launch it after system startup. Hope it helps.

An update: As of 1 April, I have not had anyfailed connections, disconnects, or stalls. Not a single one! Amazing, since before running the KB procedures one or more of these problems occured every day. So (at least for my system) the procedures worked. Also, after startupWindows Defender and Avast AntiVirus are enabled and working normally.