Why Does the IE Browser Time Out?

When Internet Explorer has difficulties displaying a website that the user wishes to visit, it will display an appropriate error message. The time out message is one of the more common messages.

Identification

When Internet Explorer attempts to connect to a website and the site does not immediately reply to the Web browser, Internet Explorer may display a time out message, such as "Microsoft Internet Explorer error 10060 connection timed out." or "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site <Web address>. The operation timed out." where <Web address> is the address of the site the user wishes to load.

Considerations

Although the specific time out messages vary among Web browsers, timing out is not specific to Internet Explorer. Frequently, users can resolve this issue by refreshing the Web page. However, users cannot prevent this error from displaying if a Web server is having connectivity issues.

Solution

Users can increase the amount of time that Internet Explorer waits before displaying the time out message by editing the registry. Website developers can use programming languages to change how much time the server will spend trying to connect to the host (Internet user's) computer before displaying the time out message,

References

• Microsoft Support:Internet Explorer error "connection timed out" when server does not respond
• Microsoft Support:How to change the default keep-alive time-out value in Internet Explorer