Netscape 4.x and Speed

Thanks MinnesotaMike... I'll let ya know!

A new puter huh? I wouldn't mind a desktop of the Mac variety... one of the new G4's... already have two PowerBooks. Someone described a setup that's being used in a medical office that set me to drooling...

I would not turn down one of the new PC's with the powerhouse Athlon processors either...

Excuse my ignorance, but what is M-Wave?

 

DB,

The MWave is a pain in the butt card that IBM put in their older computers. It is a combination sound and modem card. Problematic to the point that they settled a class action lawsuit to have them replaced with real cards. Pretty much the joke of IBM Aptiva computers.

A powerful PC would be nice some day! In the meantime, I'll just limp along with what I have.

 

Oh... OK! I got it now... my first puter was an AST P150MHz with integrated sound and video cards, not to mention the dumbest motherboard setup I've ever seen... In fact the unlucky Tech that got to work on it a couple of times called it "The computer from hell."

So I'm familiar with that "stick everything together" concept. Nothing was easy to do on that one... did teach me the fine art of colourful language though...

 

"The computer from hell." "... did teach me the fine art of colourful language though... "

DB,

LOL!! I know just how you feel!

 

Slow Loads & Hang Ups

With interest I read all the posts under this topic. "Whatis" took over 80 seconds to load but "techsurvivors loaded within 20 seconds. I use Windows 95, DSL and Navigator 4.75.
Ramona continuously helps me out of trouble and apparently I am now headed back into that area.
Some sites such as www.nytimes.com and www.usatoday.com do not load (get blank page with "Document done ").

I followed and have done many suggestions recommended on this board. Some follow: renamed HOSTS file to HOSTS.bak. That made situation worse & returned to original. Reviewed my registry settings for netscapenavigator\automation\protocols and the http & ftp are "value not set ".
I deleted the netscape.hst file.

Flash!!! before hitting the send button I went back to www.nytimes.com & it loaded. Last "whatis loaded" in 28 secs. Made no changes. Whay magic occurred????

venny

 

venny,

I followed and have done many suggestions recommended on this board. Some follow:
renamed HOSTS file to HOSTS.bak. That made situation worse & returned to original.

My recommendation for disabling your HOSTS file:
to completely disable your Hosts file, rename it to "Hosts.txt ". When you want to use it again, change it back to "Hosts ".

Rename the file by opening a DOS window from your Start Menu and typing the follwing:

To disable Hosts from a DOS window:
cd windows (press enter)
rename hosts to hosts.txt (press enter)

To Enable Hosts from a DOS window:
cd windows (press enter)
rename hosts.txt to hosts (press enter)
----
Made no changes. What magic occurred????

No voodoo involved, and I suspect this has to do with bad or MS-centric coding.

On your "Document Done" type hangs, try this:
Close Communicator and do CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the Task Manager. Look in the list for "netscape.exe" and if found then "End Task" on it.

Restart Communicator and try again.

Sometimes after viewing a page which is Java laden, the problem you are experiencing does occur.

Something else you might try:

Java is always slow to load in the very first time you access a page containing Java Applets, because Netscape needs to load the Java Interpreter (Java Virtual Machine). However, you can load the Java Interpreter when you start Netscape by adding the following command line:

-start_java

You can do this by a right click on your Communicator Desktop icon, and selecting "Properties ".
In the "Target" your entry will be:
"C:\Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Program\netscape.exe" -start_java
NOTE: there is a space between exe" and -start_java

If you want to use Java2, you can install the Java2 plug-in into Netscape 4.78 or 4.79 (if you choose to upgrade). You can get the Sun Java plug-in HERE

More than you bargained for!

Ramona

 

MinnesotaMike...

That machine earned that title... trust me!

venny

Looks like you've gotten the best advise from Ramona! But I think you may be running into what she calles "MS-centric coding" on some pages... It's becoming more and more of a problem... we've learned a lot in trying to "tweak" the UBB 6 coding on the TS site... and it seems to boil down to exactly that... IE reads and "likes" bad coding... Netscape does not.

I don't know about the time of day and how it matters, but it seems to with me too... sometimes I can get to places quickly with no fuss and other times forget-about-it...

 

Venny,

I had another thought on slow down, and your HOSTS file. Do you use eDexter with it? If not, the HOSTS file will slow Netscape literally to a crawl.

Here is information on eDexter:
http://www.accs-net.com/hosts/eDexter.html

Special Note for Netscape users: eDexter will also eliminate the "hang" problem with Netscape. If you use Netscape, it will keep waiting for a response from the blocked servers in your hosts file longer than it should - which will delay the page loading. eDexter will prevent that by pretending to be the server that has been blocked and will "talk" to Netscape for it. Internet Explorer 5 and up does not usually exhibit this problem, but you can still benefit from eDexter's other uses.

If you continue to use the HOSTS file to deter Adware/Spyware, then I would encourage you to use eDexter.

FWIW

Ramona

 

That's interesting Ramona... Windows user's get a "hang" with NS too then... seems Mac versions are harder hit... We don't use a Hosts file that I can find anywhere though.

But this is part of what we've found is the problem with Netscape on our UBB 6 board... if anyone has any ideas, speculations... straws to grasp at... I'd love to hear them:

It appears too that the problem was introduced after a certain version of NS... we're just trying to figure out the boundary version wise. Version 4.03 for Windows doesn't have the problem, that's about as far as I know for now. But it "does" affect Windows users as well.

Still don't know why... but setting NS's Cache for 0kb on Mac's improves the situation greatly, almost eliminates it.

 

Hi DB,

This Mac/Netscape hang is certainly something to gnaw on for a while. Wish I was more Mac literate. I'll scrounge around and see if I can find anything for you.

Right, you wouldn't have a HOSTS file, as it is a Windows file. The HOSTS file I refer to is the one that is used to deter Adware and Spyware. As described HERE and not the HOSTS.SAM file.

Ramona

 

Oh... duh!
Thanks Ramona I was thinking of Hosts.sam...

Anything that you find on Netscape being "stubborn" in loading pages fully and quickly would be OK to run by me. The fellow helping us is on Windows himself. He thinks the problem might have been "introduced" with some newer version of NS, since he was running v4.03 and the problem doesn't exist there at all...

I suggested he try comparing from v4.08 to v4.5 for a start, since that was such a major upgrade.

0kb for a Cache seems to solve the problem for the most part... I just leave it there now... don't ask me what the Cache has to do with... more

 

Hey there Dreambird!

There was a change in the way Java errors were reported, which I believe started with Ver. 4.03. Wonder if that might be significant?

Ramona