I've started having problems with my computer freezing, only when I'm on the Internet. It usually (but not necessarily always) happens within a half-hour, give or take, of my getting online in the morning. I'm trying to keep track of every time this happens and what things are running when I finally get control back, but since it takes a few minutes to come back, I may be missing something.

While it's "frozen", I cannot do anything, not even bring up task manager. After some minutes my mouse is active again and all is back to normal.

I'm running Win7 64-bit Home, using IE9.

Oh, and I am getting messages now and again about IE having stopped working.

Is it possible it's my IE9 that's causing these problems? Maybe I should think about FireFox?

Mary, try running a clean disk or CCleaner. Have you defraged recently? Check your e-mail also. Have you cleaned out the sent files, spam files?

Hope that helps.

Bets

In addition to Bets' excellent suggestions, clean out your browser cache - clear the history. Then try Firefox. If you no longer have the issues, then you will know the culprit is IE.

If files, etc are in my recycle bin they are not accessed at all anymore, correct? Or I would get a message saying it was in recycle and would I like to restore it?

I'm trying to make sure I don't screw myself up by taking the "big" stuff out of the recycle bin without remembering exactly what it is that I'm permanently deleting.

Or should I just NOT permanently delete what I can't remember? Outside of my recycle bin, there's not a whole lot sitting around; my computer does not need to be defragged.

I don't think I know how to "clear my browser cache". My history goes back 3 weeks. Do I have to delete the links one by one?

To clear your browser cache in IE 9, just click on Tools and then Delete Browsing History.

My opinion is if I've deleted something, then I don't want it any more. I clean out my recycle bin every day.

Mary,
There is a hardware possibility that could cause your problem, overheating of the CPU. Some CPUs will go into a "brown out" state when overheating to protect the chip. When the chip has cooled down to a safe temperature, operation will go back to normal.
The first thing to suspect for the above is a bad fan or dust clogged heatsink. However, there is another possibility with older computers. The heat transfer compound between the CPU and heatsink is no longer doing it's job.

If you are hardware handy and your computer has a heatsink on the CPU, you can remove the heatsink, clean off the heat transfer compound residue from both the CPU and heatsink, apply new compound, and reattach the heatsink.
That can make a significant difference in operating temperature.

You can check the temperature of your CPU with several programs available on the Internet. One such is Motherboard Monitor.

I started to do some of the suggestions given here: no defrag was necessary, cleaned out some of my recycle bin, cleaned some cache, but then I thought I'd give Firefox (which I use at work) a try and so far, so good. It's been a few days, so I'm not certain that IE was the problem, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a log of detected troubles when something like this happens? I seem to remember that being said in other posts.

Have you seen this on MS? It might help figure out the problem. If it's still occurring.

Homer,
The link you included refers to IE7 and IE8; I've got IE9. In any case, while everything's working correctly, I'm going to stick with it.
(I update my computer when updates come from Microsoft and they pertain to me.)

Mary. There was something on TV the other night about IE9 and a problem but I missed it. Also, there are complaints that after the last update for IE 9 there are problems with the PC's running very slowly or freezing. Please let us know what you find out.
Terri