Re: Problem: XP + SP2 + IE = Slow first connection to any new site.

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: David Browne (meat_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/17/04 

Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 16:45:34 -0500

Gentelmen,

I experienced the same problem, similarly failed to resolve it with the
above steps.

One additional symptom for me was that the problem was in name resolution.

If I set my home page to
  http://64.233.171.104/
Which is www.google.com, then IE launched instantly and displayed the page.
Set to
  http://www.google.com
The page displayed after a 7-10 second delay.

Also from a commandline
   ping www.google.com
exhibited the same delay.

So thinking it might be a DNS problem, I deconfigured the DNS servers and
made sure WINS was disabled on my network adapter. Then I put a single
entry in my hosts file: www.google.com. I expected the problem to go away
since this should force name resolution only using my hosts file (and then
broadcast). Anyway hit the hosts file, find www.google.com, and hit the
site, no problem.

Well the problem didn't go away.

So then I fired up Intel VTune, an excelent code profiler which allows,
among other things, profiling of code even when you don't have the source.
It will show a call graph analysis for any process you want. A call graph
analysis of ping.exe should show what function was being called during the
7-10 second delay.

Here's what I found: the delay was in the stack

getaddrinfo ( ws2_32.dll )
 GetAddrInfoW ( ws2_32.dll )
  WSALookupServiceNextW ( ws2_32.dll )
   WSAttemptAutodialName (rasadhlp.dll)
    AcsHlpAttemptConnection (rasadhlp.dll)

The call to AcsHlpAttemptConnection took 7 seconds to complete.

Now getaddrinfo is the normal Winsock function for resolving a host name,
but I'm not sure why it needs to invoke the Dial-Up networking junk,
especially since I don't have a modem, and have only one network adapter.

Anyway that's still a bit of a mystery and probably a bug, but here's the
fix:

Go to Control Panel\Network Connections\ Advanced (menu) \ Dial-Up
Preferences \
Under Enable autodial by location, uncheck all the locations.

Hope this helps,

David

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