IE7 - High CPU Usage and slow response under vista

I have been noticing a gradual deterioration of web browsing performance on my laptop. It was getting to the point where using ie7 was getting counterproductive.

I noticed that the Windows Task Manager was showing IE7 using about 50 percent or more of the CPU, peaking at near 100 percent. Loading some pages I visit regularly would result in very choppy scrolling. I would also find that typing things into the pages was getting slow.

There were a number of forums where this issue was being discussed. The IE7 Phishing filter is supposed to be one of the main culprits but it was disabled on my installation.

Just to test things, I closed IE7 and did some browsing in Firefox. Firefox hardly used any CPU at all. One thing to note is that I don't have a lot of add ons in FF.

I found that there is an option to start IE7 with no add ons. In Vista, I just did a START and put INTERNET EXPLORER in the search box. That showed the Internet Explorer (no Add ons) icon.

When I ran with no add ons, I found that the CPU usage was a fraction of what it was with functioning add ons. The pages were loading much, much faster.

So, the problem was in the add ons. I went into the TOOLS, MANAGE ADD ONS option of IE7. If you look at the currently loaded add ons, you will see which add ons are active. What I did was to start disabling the add ons that I didn't really need. For example, do you really need the Google and Yahoo toolbars? After I disabled about half of the add ons, I tried IE again and , guess what, the cpu usage is staying low and browsing is much faster.

If your IE7 is getting slower, you might want to check your add on situation.

Urgent Contact ICann immediately to prevent skyrocketing domain name pricing

The new draft of the ICANN regulations has the potential to allow the registrars to charge exhorbitant fees for domain name renewals.

Under the current system, .com domain names are subject to price controls. Under the proposed system, there is the possibility of a nightmare scenario where someone could work like crazy to build a website and domain up and then find that the registrar wants hundred of thousands or millions of dollars to renew that domain name. Supposedly you can lock in the pricing for up to 10 years. However is is obvious that 10 years is simply too short of a timeframe.

There is an excellent discusssion about this at webmasterworld.com . It explains the issue and what can be done.

The call to action is

1. Go to the webmasterworld discussion and read up on the problem.
2. Send a comment to Icann stating that you are against the removal of price controls of gTLDs. Scroll down and you will see the email addresses you can use. I used the second one about Module 1.

It is imperative that we get as many comments into Icann as possible. NOTE - when you email them they will send you an email 'stop spam' confirmation. Please be sure to look for that in your inbox otherwise your comment won't count

Kodak Adobe Photoshop Photo Downloader and "parameter not found"

I had a client who called with a problem. He had an older Kodak 4900 camera with the Adobe Photoshop Photo Downloader 3.2. When he hit the button on the camera dock the software would respond with a fairly useless "Parameter not found"

Since he had the cd I tried reloading the program but the problem remained. I checked via my computer and could see the pictures he took. However, on closer examination, one of the pictures was showing an error.

I deleted that pic and the program worked perfectly.

I questioned him a bit more and it turns out that something happened when he took the first picture. The camera locked up. He had to remove the batteries to reset the camera. That left a corrupted photo in the camera which the software could not handle.

So, if you run into this, try going through My Computer and manually deleting the picture that doesn't show a proper thumbnail.