Windows inducing app startup delays?

I have posted on this issue before but I now believe this to be a Windows problem...

I have tried with installs of Edge, Edge beta, and Chrome, when the app launches, no matter what the initial page, including the Start Page in Edge, it takes 6 seconds to load. The same amount of time - every time. It's on a very fast internet connection - I just tested with speediest, 2340/355.

Then everything is fine.

I have tried:

- starting up to Start Page
- Starting to a specific Home Page - Google, DuckDuckGo, microsoft.com as examples
- tweaking browser performance counters on and off
- restarting Windows
- deleting Edge Userdata folder
- repairing Edge
- uninstalling/reinstalling Edge beta
- installing Chrome fresh to try
- I have run all the Scannow and Dism checks - no issues

and probably some other things I have forgotten! It happens on one Win 11 computer, but not another that I have!

Any ideas? Thanks!

My first suspect would be an add-on or one of your browser settings but you indicate you had uninstall/reinstalled so I am assuming you tested when the browser was virgin., I don't see in your list that you've checked for malware in that machine. You may have a nasty floating around in that machine. Install Malwarebytes. Scan and remove everything it finds. Free Antivirus 2024 | Download Free Antivirus & Virus Scan | 100% Free & Easy Install

When you install the Malwarebytes app, it installs a 14-day trial of Premium version. it scans in real-time. It automatically expires after 14 days and reverts to the free version which you can continue to use for manual scans or you can uninstall it.

You could also have a piece of installed software messing with your browsers. Testing in a quick clean boot state can tell you that.
If it doesn't happen in a clean boot, you have some software conflicting with Windows. Brink's procedure will help you weed out which one. Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts Tutorial

Hmmm, the fact that it happens with any web page makes me wonder if the issue might be slow DNS response. For example, you type in www.google.com and the first thing your PC has to do is to query DNS to find out what the addresses for google are.

Try this:

Open a command prompt.

Type "ping www.google.com" and hit ENTER. Do you get back responses quickly or is there a delay of several seconds before responses are shown to you?

Type "nslookup" and hit ENTER.
Type "www.google.com" and hit ENTER.

Now, does it take 6 seconds to return IP addresses to you or does that happen much faster?

Type "exit" and hit ENTER.

Follow the next steps only if you got a quick response to the above. If it took a while (~6 seconds) then you already know that DNS is likely the problem.

type this command followed by ENTER:

pathping www.google.com

This will take a while, maybe several minutes. Grab the output and post it here.

@glasskuter all was fine, I run malwarebytes (and defender - both said clean!

@hsehestedt - ping of google was fast. the nslookup times out every time, so I stopped there:



I wondered if iPv6 was ok, as I saw it using that address. So I ran the ipv6 test sites and it's perfect. I also did a ping -6 of google.com to test IPv6 that way, came back immediately.

So suspecting dns per your post, I changed the DNS locally, instead of from the router, to 8.8.8.8 - Google. I opened the browser - immediate!

So there is some issue with DNS, thank you!!! I'll keep poking around, I already see some possible setting differences between the working and not working Windows that I want to investigate. In the interim if you have any ideas what to check let me know, thanks!

Found it! Somehow a custom setting got into the network config. It's working great now, and the key was seeing the timeouts in nslookup which helped me easily analyze and debug it. Thank you again @hsehestedt !

Awalt said:

Found it! Somehow a custom setting got into the network config. It's working great now, and the key was seeing the timeouts in nslookup which helped me easily analyze and debug it. Thank you again @hsehestedt !

Click to expand...

Good job tracking down the problem!