Internet apps suddenly want to be servers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Baffin
  • Start date Start date
B

Baffin

Some time after a cold boot, usually after many hours of usage, a new
instance of IE or FF will freeze up displaying "Waiting for http://www...."
in the status bar indefnitely. I've learned that this can be overcome by
doing the following about 10 times: Close the browser, open it again, click
on a fav, then if it works, great, else if it freezes, close and repeat.
When it finally works, ZoneAlarm will then pop up a warning saying "IE (or
FF) is trying to act as a server". The source IP is 0.0.0.0 Port 63270 (but
the port varies), so I allow it, and it works. From then on, any app that
accesses the internet will cause ZA to raise the 'wants to act as a server'
warning. The only way out of this is to reboot.

I've been living with this for over a year. I could allow all internet apps
to run as servers and then wouldn't notice it (aside from the ten retries)
but would rather know when client-only apps try to act as servers.

My habit is to open a new instance of IE or FF whenever I want to go to a
new web site (ie., I use windows not tabs), so I'm opening and closing IE or
FF frequently. Often I have about a dozen open at once.

It's Vista Home Premium on a Dell Inspiron 530 with Nvidia nForce network
chips to a SpeedTouch 585 DSL gateway. DHCLP enabled, lease is typically one
day and the expiry time is always the next day when this happens (that I've
noticed).

Any ideas, or suggestions for testing? I'd love it if this problem were
solved -- it's so tiresome to reboot.
 
Baffin said:
Any ideas, or suggestions for testing? I'd love it if this problem were
solved -- it's so tiresome to reboot.

Dump ZA and start learning to use tabs.

DDW
 
More information:

During the period when new instances of IE or FF (or any other internet app)
get stuck in 'waiting', other apps that were started earlier continue to
operate (eg., mail can still be sent and received). However, if the mail
client is closed and then reopened, it will also get stuck.

Also, another computer (XP, also using ZA) using the same router have no
problems while this problem is occuring on the Vista system.
 
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