The little circle next to 'Mumsnet' on the Tab keeps going round & round

[KatyMac]

& the page never arrives

How can I fix it

I am on Firefox

Log out. Restart your browser, log back in.

Thanks I gave that a go,

& I restarted the computer

Which page?
Probably caused by a misbehaving advert.

Lots of them Nick & not all not MN (but most of them are)

I have to refresh, then hit enter in the box at the top when the bars 'freeze' towards the end of the strip

It means the browser is still loading data from somewhere on the page - usually happens with slow graphics for me.

Your refresh is just triggering the browser to re-request the items again.

It's most likely the adverts (or the twitter feed) - although my browser reports a youtube feed embedded somewhere.

If you are on dialup or slow wireless, then potentially it's due to latency issues (on some wireless connections I've seen double packets and servers getting confused, leading to messages getting posted twice in IM chat or on forums). Not much you can do about that.

Alternatively you might want to give a quick scan for spyware and viruses, probably unlikely here.

Possibly you could install the Ad Block or No Script extensions, that would stop any misbehaving adverts.

I have that a lot. Its because my internet conection is extremely slow at certain times of day.

If you have a WiFi hub in your house go and switch it off for a minute and switch it back on.

Oherwise try right clicking on your Wireless Network Connection and then do Repair.

I just hit ESCAPE (to stop the browser from trying to load the remainder).

Some browsers might have a "stop" button instead.

Just don't let it worry you, you cannot 'break' your PC, and if it is irritating, then all the easier to just stop it - it's probably unimportant anyway!

If you get a blank screen, afterwards, then there may be a problem with the HTML on the page. It might be worth trying with a different browser, and if that also "hangs" (with a "still loading" symbol) then it's likely to be the speed of connection or the website.

I have in the past seen Firefox (and before it, Netscape) show no page content, and still be 'waiting'. In those cases the page had been poorly written in HTML and bugs in Internet Explorer (or not being as strict on matching brackets, etc) meant the page would 'work' if using MS IE but not the other browsers.

Once saw a page created by a local web site 'designer' which showed a navigation menu on IE, but if viewed on Netscape showed none of the navigation information, because the code was missing some closing markers and Netscape sat there hoping to find them. Sometimes a browser like Firefox or NS will just 'choke' (on the rubbish page) and give an error message instead.