Ever since I started using IE 8, I have been having problems.  Very frustrating problems.  So frustrating, that the firefox icon is now right next to the IE icon.  (don't get me wrong, I like firefox.)

The Problem:

Internet Explorer was hanging, freezing, pausing, locking up.  It would not return a page 50% of the time, guaranteed.  So 25% of that time, I was getting "Connecting to ..." with an IP address.  I read blog post after blog post, re-registered dlls, disabled all add-ons and the problem was still happening.  I started the debugger in visual studio to see what DLLs were running... nothing out of the ordinary - no third party dlls currently running.  No processor spikes.  I was getting absolutely no where.  I was just about at the point of uninstalling IE8, but there had to be a solution.

The Answer:

It turns out that the problem was AVG and the link scanner.  Disabling the add-on is not enough.  You must run the installer again and remove the component.  There are probably lots of blog posts out there with information about the problem, but since I couldn't find it, here it is again.

By the way, I probably installed IE8 and the AVG 8.? on the same day, so who would have thought it was AVG?  well, I can't say it is AVG, but rather internet explorer doing something when it shouldn't because the add-on is disabled...