NS 4.8 under Windows 2000

I've just upgraded my O/S to Windows 2000 Professional (no changes to my hardware). I reinstalled Netscape 4.8, rather than trying to work with NS 7 for the time being. But I'm noticing something odd with NS 4.8. After I've used it for a while, even if I close it and open it several times, it seems to slow down. Not only do webpages load more slowly, but when Messenger tries to contact my ISP to download new mail, it visibly takes longer and longer to connect. I suspect this is related to the old "phantom Netscape" problem, but the Win2K Task Manager doesn't show any extra copies of Netscape open; however, the Task Manager is a bit harder to understand than the Win95 task list I was used to.
Anyway, I just wonder if there's any fix for this, or what I'm doing wrong that's causing the problem.

 

I have Netscape 4.80 installed in my Windows XP. Netscape 4.80 displays pages a bit slower than 7.02 but I can't notice the "phantom Netscape" you described.

 

In the task manager, click on the process tab and look to see if there is a process called netscape.exe.

 

Thanks, Brooks - I did eventually figure that part out myself ;-) (Although the names of the "processes" aren't always obviously related to what's going on - what's "smss.exe ", for example?) Sometimes there are extra copies of netscape.exe running, and sometimes there aren't, when the page loading starts slowing down.
Some of this may be this BBS, rather than my Netscape - there's a thread about this in General Discussions. But it also happens on other websites, especially ones with lots of frames and/or lots of ad banners.

 

Your welcome.

One thing about those process that you don't recognize, is that a lot of them are processes that were hidden from you in 9x.

the smss for example is Session Manager Subsystem, which does behind the scene work as part of the OS such as loading com and printer ports and other things we never think about.


One thing handy, is that you cannot end a process that is absolutely vital to running the system. You can end one that does other things and can make some programs or peripherals not run correctly until you reboot.

Ending a process will not delete anything from the drive, just might require you to reboot.

That is a problem with Netscape 4.8 just as it has been with most of the 4.x series of Netscape.

 

I just read elsewhere in this forum that Mozilla is going to be releasing redesigned, more efficient versions of the browser and the mail/news programs, which will eventually be available either separately or as a package. Maybe I'll try them after I hear some evaluations.

 

I think that might have been my post.

They are still buggy at this time. It looks to be a few months before they become closer to being ready.

I am having troubles with the mail filters as we speak with Thunderbird (mail client) dumping everything into my Windows BBS folder instead of the seperate folders I have created.

Firebird (browser) is currently undergoing some bad problems with bookmarks and the autocomplete in the URL bar (called type ahead find in Firebird).

Now, before when I was using Mozilla 1.3 it ran pretty solidly. I have not tried the Mozilla 1.4 alpha release yet, so I cannot comment on it.

For now, unless you just enjoy playing with them and/or reporting bugs, I would stay away from the Firebird/Thunderbird line.

Mozilla might be worth a try. It really depends on your hardware and it is a little slower than the Netscape 4.x, although it does have some nice added features like pop-up blocking and being able to highlight a word and right clicking to to search.