Here’s an unusual problem that took a while to resolve, mostly because it was hard to find just the right Google search terms to look up the solution.

The problem is that in the IE browser, typing in just www.[somedomain].com would not autofill the http:// prefix.  The browser would just stall and not load the page.

I did a lot of searching for phrases like “http not autofilling” and “page slow to load without http.”  I finally stumbled on the correct nomenclature.  This autofill feature is actually called “inline autocomplete.” 

Most  of the suggestions said to make sure that under Tools > Internet Options > Autocomplete the Use Inline Autocomplete boxed was checked.  That did not solve my problem.

What finally did the trick was an obscure posting that said to do this: 

Verify the following entries are correct in the Registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\URL\DefaultPr­efix]
@=”http://”

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\URL\Prefixes]
“ftp”=”ftp://”
“gopher”=”gopher://”
“home”=”http://”
“mosaic”=”http://”
“www”=”http://”

Once I added the @=”http://” entry all is working OK.