Problem with incomplete page and blank explorer

[Daniel Alvarez]

Hello. First of all, I'm working in an ASP.NET 1.1 project, which has a
large page (due to client requirements, a huge page is needed to process the
information, and it has a lot of interactivity with the user, so that if
some value changes, the screen refresh showing some other data, or a grid,
and so on). This is working well (but slow, but this is not the problem
right now).
The problem is that, randomly, opening the page, or refreshing it due to a
postback, the explorer gets a blank page, and the content is never rendered
(only if the F5 or back is pressed the content refresh).

Some guides:

The application is built to run with Internet Explorer only, so we cannot
test the problem with Firefox or another browser.
We have the latest patchs and service packs applied (I've read some problems
occured when using Internet Explorer without some patchs).
The problem is difficult to reproduce. But some people here is testing the
system, so we get some feedback of them when using and having the error.
When the page is in that state, the cursor is in waiting state when the
mouse is over the title bar.
Doing a "view source" command, shows the page, but it is incomplete (at
random places).
Cutting the view source text and pasting in a text file, we get a file size
smaller that the page size got with the "properties" in the page. (This
means to me that the page has not finalized transmitting the content
completely)
We have some dropdownlists in the page, some of them have lots of data, so
we cut the data in them so to discard the problem. Keep on failing.
In one test, we changed the http 1.1 protocol (default in Internet
Explorer), to http 1.0, so the page transmit syncronously and not using
chunked encoding. (The problem persisted, but it was less often... But
persisted)
Other thing that we tested is disabling the compression in the IIS. (but
didn't work)

Any other clues?

Thank you very much

Daniel Alvarez
Inworx IT Solutions
http://www.inworx.com
Buenos Aires
Argentina

 

[Tim_Mac]

hi Daniel,
my guess is that there are intermittent network problems between the client
and web server. the problem may not manifest with other web sites because
the pages are probably much smaller. is there anything common between the
users reporting the problem? i.e. VPN, hardware, modem type, location,
anti-virus software, firewalls?
do all the network cards have the correct and most up-to-date drivers? i
know it sounds like a long shot but it is a possibility, a corrupt packet on
the network could cause the network card to hang etc.

how about the server, is it under heavy stress? you could leave the
performance monitor running for a while. i wonder what the HTTP status
codes of the failed page loads are. it may or may not be practical to look
at such detail.

i've also heard of proxy servers that interfere with asp.net page output,
corrupting the viewstate, but this usually produces an exception so i guess
it's not related.

i hope this provides you with some areas to look at in more detail. i'd be
interested to hear if you make any progress.
tim