SSL Web Sites May Take a Long Time to Load with Internet Explorer 5

If you use Internet Explorer 5.x to visit a Web site that uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), it may take a long Q318620 time to load the page.

When you visit a Web site that uses SSL, Internet Explorer tries to verify the certificate against the Certificate Revocation list. If that list is not available, or if the root certificate is not trusted, Internet Explorer takes a long time to time out. When Internet Explorer times out, you receive the following message: If you choose to proceed, the page is loaded.

To resolve this issue, use either of the following methods:

• Trust the certifying authority by installing the root certificate for the certifying authority in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store in Internet Explorer.
• Publish the Certificate Revocation list so that Internet Explorer can verify the certificate. You still receive the security message this is listed earlier in this article.

For additional information about how to publish the Certificate Revocation list with Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0 and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: This article also describes how to publish the root certificate if you require clients to able to verify the certificate path.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.