IE very slow to load screen

loads the background colour then thinks about the rest for eons

[stuartmcdonald]

I've got an odd problem that I have only seen with IE (using Ver 6.0, no special toolbars, no fancy javascript). When the site is requested, IE hums and whirls and spits out the background colour (a pale blue) and then in the status bar it says "done". There's then a pause and it starts whirling again loading loading, thinking thinking, then bang the whole page appears in one hit.

The problem is this pause between the pale blue background and the rest of the stuff suddenly appearing can be upwards of ten seconds...

In Firefox and Opera it loads progressively (as it should).

Any idea on what may cause a problem like this?

If it matters we're using the PHP ob_start("ob_gzhandler") to zip it up -- but my understanding was IE handles this fine...

I posted this same question on another forum and the only suggetsion was that it may have been a caching issue, but I've tried all manner of cache settings without luck.

I realise help is difficult to give without me publishing the URL, but any general suggestions on thinsg to look for would be much appreciated.

[kaled]

Is the actual, total load time approximately the same or is IE slower?

Kaled.

[stuartmcdonald]

They're in the same ballpark -- IE is maybe 20% slower than Opera or firefox.

What is frustrating is that while Opera/Firefox load the page progressivly, IE has a blank screen except for the background colour and a status bar reading "Done" -- both of these appear just about immediately, so to an unfamilar user, it looks like there is nothing more to come.