Weird problem with IE: pages take forever to load

[bobolito]

When IE 6 tries to open any page it just waits there for about 15 or 20 seconds before it begins to load it. It's as if it waits for something to time out before trying to contact the server. This happens when clicking on any link on any page everytime, so going through just 2 or 3 pages takes several minutes because I have to wait the same amount of time every time I click. I simply use Firefox now because of that. Firefox doesn't have that lag and it loads pages right away without the wait. I have checked for spyware, malware, viruses, etc. and everything seems to be clean. Recently, I installed IE 7 beta and it has the same exact problem.

I don't know if this is even related, but there is something else that bugs me. Sometimes I need to connect to my job's VPN network and I create the connection to the VPN and it connects fine. The VPN connection behaves like a dialup connection in the sense that there is a pop-up box to enter name and password before you can connect. What bugs me is that many times I am using IE and every time IE wants to contact the internet it tries to open the VPN connection so I have to keep on closing the VPN connection box. Once I close it, the browser connects to the server and the page loads. I don't know why it keeps on trying to connect through the VPN rather than using the connection already available. This happens with any program that wants to contact a server on the internet, especially IE. My workaround to this annoyance has been to simply delete the VPN connection and only create it when I need to use it.

My suspicion is that IE is trying to connect to the Internet the wrong way and it doesn't sense that there is a connection to the Internet already available, so after it times out or "gets tired" of looking for a way to connect to the internet (it will try the VPN first), it then finds the existing interface to connect to the internet and that's probably the reason for the lag. That's only my educated guess, but I have no idea.

I have a Pentium D 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, 80GB + 160GB Hard Drives, two DVD recorders, ATI AWI 2006 video card, HDTV Wonder card, Linksys Wireless G adapter. Running Windows XP SP2 with all latest Microsoft updates, Windows Defender, Symantec Antivirus Enterprise Edition 10.

By the way, I connect to the Internet using a wireless 54G card in my desktop computer. My signal is excellent and the transfer rate when I download something is in the vicinity of 8mbps to 10mbps.

[glc]

Leave the VPN connection enabled, but in Internet Options, Connections - set it to "never dial a connection" and in LAN settings, uncheck all 3 boxes.

[bobolito]

That's exactly how it is set already, but the problem still persisted. However, yesterday, I think I hit the nail in the head: I upgraded to the new Windows Defender, not sure why this fixed the problem but it looks like installing that fixed it. IE no longer has a lag and the dialup box doesn't pop up anymore.

I had mistakenly typed in my original post I had Windows Defender, but I really meant the old MS Antispyware.