Tried and Tried

[Ron Prestenback]

Hey guys. I'm having a very annoying problem that I can't seem to figure out. I don't know much about web design, but I think I'm having a problem with JavaScript. Go here to get a rundown of what happened and what a couple of people suggested.

Now, the reason I've came into this forum, and why I think it's Java, is because I was trying to help someone with some networking problems they were having the other day, and I saw these two script files on microsoft's site that were supposed to do some tests for you. I wanted to see what they actually did, so I ran these pages on my computer first. I am running Win2K, and I believe these pages were designed with ME in mind.

Anyway, I have been poring over countless help files looking for an answer to how to fix this. The easiest place for me to test it is microsoft's KB KB search page, because I have this page set as my home page, so I saved a copy of that page onto my local disk to try to figure out what was going on. I have DreamWeaver, and I tried to use the debugging tool for Java on my local copy of their page, but I wasn't able to get it to work right (it would freeze right along with IE).

So, if anyone wants to take a look at the scripts files I ran, they are here. This link goes to a directory where I placed these two scripts, in case there is code on those two pages that somehow affected my copy of IE. (I don't even know if this is possible) I have placed my system profile here.

After investigating and reading into Javascript a little bit, it seems like when I encounter a "onChange()" function, that is when IE slows down. I could be wrong. (I could be absolutely nowhere in the neighborhood of right, as a matter of fact.)

Finally, in reference to the cross-referenced article above, I did try logging on with another userid, and did not have the same problem, but his suggestion of deleting this user account is undesireable, as I would lose my SID and this would cause alot of problems with different networks that I help remotely administrate. If anyone here has any ideas as to why I'm getting this error, and more importantly, how to fix it, I would be very happy to hear any suggestions. Thanks in advance! <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">

[Ron Prestenback]

OK, I finally started to get the hang of the debugger, and I think I have a result, but I don't know what it means or how to fix it. I walked the debugger through windrivers.com's "Start new thread" page, because apparently, I'm having problems when I exit single-line text input fields by either tabbing or clicking elsewhere on the screen (I've spent the entire day pouring over MSDN, Dreamweaver help, and various internet sites just to learn that little bit.....I guess ya gotta crawl before you can walk huh?).

OK, so I walked it through, and when I tabbed out of the text field, it lagged as usual. Well, at the exact moment the page came back and started responding again, the debugger came back with this:

Warning 5001 global variable "session_dt" already defined in global scope
The variable name was already used at the global level. It may have been used in a different .js file that is being used in the same html file.

as well as this:

Warning 5001 global variable "session_j" already defined in global scope
The variable name was already used at the global level. It may have been used in a different .js file that is being used in the same html file.

That was dreamweaver's debugger. Here's what Microsoft's debugger had to say (this one wouldn't even let me walk through the page - it stopped me when I tried to set the first breakpoint):

A debugger break at "java.lang.Object.wait" could not be handled because the source document could not be found. Check the class path in the Debug Options dialog. The application will continue.

I was hoping that maybe someone could take a look at the source on the "Add new topic" page of this site, and be able to tell me why I am getting these two error messages. Any ideas? I will continue working on it myself, but any input would be great.

[Ron Prestenback]

Well, I've finally found my problem, after downloading and installling SDK, with Debugging Tools, albeit indirectly. LOL

Took me about 2 hours to find the right files on microsoft's site, then another two hours of beating by head against the wall trying to debug without any symbol files. Once I realized that I needed symbol files, it then me about another hour to find the right symbol files. Once you know exactly where to go in the myriad of web pages on msdn.microsoft.com, it's pretty easy to find everything, but without knowing the right terminology, it's all but impossible.

Anyway, I downloaded the first debugging application file, but instead of saving it to disk, I clicked on open by mistake. I didn't realize this until the thing opened when it got finished instead of just beeping that the file transfer was done. So I looking in my temporary internet files for the downloaded copy, and the view that was on that folder looked kind of strange, so I went into "Customize this folder" and reset the folder view to default.

Well, the instant I hit apply, the browser window that was in the background (which was lcoked up as usual) beeped at me, and when I clicked over it said "You must refresh this page for settings to take effect." Odd, I thought. After I clicked OK, everything returned back to normal. What's even better than this is that a problem I've been having recently with windows explorer closing as soon as I open it with the message "Explorer has generated errors and will be closed" went away. This would happen almost every time I opened explorer, but if I opened My Computer instead, it was fine.

No more errors, no more taking forever on pages with input=text fields, nothing. I was about five minutes away from doing a complete reinstall, (which would have caused me to lose weeks of work setting up my programs all over) but now I don't have to.

So, with this new information, can one of you guys tell me what caused this? I realize changing the folder view on my temporary internet folder is what caused, but I guess what I'm asking is why did this cause such odd symptoms to occur?