IE11 stuck at initial start page for webdriver server only when connection to the URL is slow
It hasn't been updated for a while, but recently I had very similar issue - IEDriverServer was eventually opening page under test, but in most cases just stuck on Initial page of WebDriver.
What I found the root cause (in my case) was startup setting of IE. I had Start with tabs from the last session enabled, when changed back to Start with home page driver started to work like a charm, opening page under test in 100% of tries.
For the IE webdriver, it opens the IE browsers but it starts to load the local host and then stops (ie/ It never stated loading ). WHen the browser stops loading it shows the msg 'Initial start page for webdriver server'. The problem is that this does not occur every time I execute the test case making it difficult to identify what could be the cause of the issue. What I have noticed is when this issue occurs, the url will take ~25 secs to load manually on the same machine. When the issue does not occur, the URL will load within 3secs.
All security setting are the same (protected Mode enabled across all zone)
enhance protected mode is disabled
IE version 11
the URL is added as a trusted site.
Any clue why it does not load the URL sometimes?