Internet Explorer Hangs for Five Minutes Accessing Dynamic Content in Frames (279745)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows NT 4.0 SP 1
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows 98 Second Edition SP 1
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows 98 SP 1
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows 2000 SP 1
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 for Windows 2000
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 for Windows 98
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 for Windows 98 Second Edition
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 for Windows Millennium Edition
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 for Windows NT 4.0

This article was previously published under Q279745

SYMPTOMS

When you are downloading dynamic content that is generated through ASP pages or a Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Internet Explorer may seem to stop responding (hang) for up to five minutes and you may receive the following error message.
2147012894 Internet Client Error: Request Timeout

CAUSE

Internet Explorer has a connection limit for HTTP 1.1 of two open connections. If an application thread starts the download of two content pages and then starts a synchronous download of an object (i.e. Java Class files) then Wininet.dll tries to obtain a socket for this third download request. Wininet.dll has already hit the connection limit for HTTP 1.1 because of the previous requests therefore it blocks the application thread with a WaitforSingleObject(). In the meantime, the first content page is downloaded by using one of the first two download requests and tries to indicate a completion status. But the application thread is blocked in WaitforSingleObject() and resumes after 5 minutes and completes its execution. The synchronous download request is aborted because it could not obtain a socket during the WaitForSingleObject() call. Since the object failed to download, the content of the web page may not display as the author intended.

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue on the client computer, you can modify the registry to increase the maximum connection limit. For additional information about changing the connection limits, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

183110 INFO: WinInet Limits Connections Per Server

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:11/26/2003
Keywords:kbenv kbprb KB279745