Why would this web page cause IE6 to lock up?

Question

I'm stumped. From what we can tell there is nothing wrong with this page and it renders fine everywhere else (IE7/IE8, FireFox, Opera, Safari, etc). The problem is that if it's loaded in IE6 on Windows XP SP3 it just locks up the browser and it has to be force-closed through task manager in most cases. A few of our test computers load it fine, but others just up and die like they joined a cult and drank the punch. We're at our wits end trying to identify the problem, or even what is special about the computers where it works or doesn't work. Any thoughts?

http://www.centerforsight.net/doctors-staff/providerDisplay.cfm?staID=8

Responses like "why are you using ColdFusion" or "because IE6 sucks" won't help me. Our client is stuck with IE6 for the foreseeable future and needs their web site to work in that version. Any insight into the actual problem are greatly appreciated, however. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

It sounds like that something in the JS files gets locked into an infinite loop on IE. Why don't you try putting in alerts into the JS functions that get called to try and isolate the piece of code that locks the browser.

IE's JS engine is full of bugs and you probably found one.

Answer 2

Maybe it has something to do with Javascript code. IE6's engine is undoubtedly much less well designed than that of other browsers.

Answer 3

Try loading it inside IE Tester and see if it offers any clues.

Answer 4

It's either javascript or it's waiting to have information dumped from a buffer. If the entire page loads in one giant blob and gets sent (and has a lot to it) it can also overwhelm IE and lock it up. (or at least lock it till the glob gets rendered)

Answer 5

Do they have the latest version of IE6? Have they run Windows Update recently? Maybe there's some obscure bug that is fixed in a patch or service pack.

Answer 6

Save a copy of the page on your local machine with Firefox. Loadup the page IE 6, does it hang? If no, find out what firefox is not loading, if yes starting removing stuff from the page. Start removing script tags one by one until you stop it from crashing, when you've tracked down a specific problem, try reposting the question to get a better answer about how to fix the JS issue :)

Answer 7

Did you resolve this issue? I am having the same problem.