I'm not sure where to post this because I'm not sure what's going on. I'm
looking for suggestions as to how to debug this issue.

When I'm in an email, I can click on a link to go to another related
article. Most of the time it works just fine. Recently, however, I've had
the following problem:

I click on the link and the system tries to go there, but the linked site
doesn't fully appear. Sometimes it's just a blank browser screen;
sometimes the little icon that monitors loading goes a few bars and stops;
sometimes most of it's there but it's still waiting for something else. At
this point, the "connection" freezes. I try to delete, but it doesn't
happen. I do the "ctrl-alt-del" thing and "end now" but it doesn't happen.
Often I can do other work while this "thing" sits in the background.
Eventually something causes it to go away -- but that can take several
minutes.

This seems to have gotten much worse in the past several weeks. I checked
the things I've downloaded recently and nothing seems to be an obvious
culprit, but I don't know how to test them for this effect.

Can somebody suggest a possible cause and a procedure for testing it?

It's not a "blue screen" failure, but it's annoying.

Thanks...

Phil