Slow loading in IE, chrome; fine in FF and Opera

Question

I've been developing an intranet application in APEX (accessed via the IP, port, and application number, like 10.1.6.94:8087/apex/f?p=937).

The problem is, when I had my coworkers test it, they ran into all sorts of problems because the javascript and other resources on the page were loading very slowly. They're all using Dell Latitudes, on different browsers. I checked through the internet options and compared to multiple desktops and the settings were the same.

No matter what I try, on these laptops, Internet Explorer and Chrome are very slow to connect to the site and load pages, and much of the functionality is gone (such as changing a dropdown causing a report to refresh, via dynamic actions in APEX). Firefox and Opera work just fine.

On my home laptop, my work desktop, and my colleague's desktop, the pages work fine in IE and Chrome.

I thought it might be the hosts file at first, but the hosts file on the problem laptops appears to be empty (except for the comments at the top).

I've tried all manner of things, such as:

• adding the site to the trusted sites
• checking to make sure that "Active scripting" was enabled under security settings (in internet options)
• unchecking "check for server certificate revocation" and "check for publisher's certificate revocation" before restarting
• turning off compatibility mode
• unchecking "Display intranet sites in Compatibility view"
• updating Chrome to use the latest Javascript engine on the problem laptops

When profiling the network usage in IE 11 on the problem laptops, it looks like files that are 20 KB in size are taking > 5 seconds to load, and sometimes connections can take 60 seconds.

I'm pulling my hair out and seem to have exhausted all resources I can find.

Answer 1

After hours and hours of searching, I stumbled upon the setting that was causing the issue. I was inspired by this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1934605/1102199

Go into internet options (either Start -> "Internet Options", from the Control Panel, or in Internet Explorer, go to Tools -> Internet Options).

Then click "Connections", then "LAN Settings", then make sure to uncheck "Automatically detect settings." This was unchecked on all the computers where things were working correctly, and checked on the computers where things were slow. I'm still not sure why Firefox and Opera weren't affected by this, but there you have it.