Internet Explorer question (problem)

[Richard]

What's wrong & what can I do to fix it?

Symptom: When I go to my home page in IE (happens to be fox news) the page comes up fine & dandy.

When I click on a news headline, the screen will change and the bottom left corner will show various things/images downloading... the corner will then show "DONE" and the screen is TOTALLY blank, except for "Foxnews" background image. No news story, no nothing.

I go over to Firefox and the story just pops up fine. I do not have this issue at home either, just here at work.

I've gone into Tools/Internet connections/advanced and hit "restore defaults" but the problem/issue persists. No known viruses either.

Any ideas for this pc dufas?

/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[getut]

Its probably just a corrupted javascript. Browse to a site other than foxnews then clear the cache and history. Then go back to the site. It should work fine after that. If that still doesn't fix it, the next most likely problem is below:

Do you have an IT department there and if so are they capable of installing software changing settings remotely that you can't overide?

If so, they are probably doing something similar to what we are doing here. Disable every component of IE that has an unpatched security problem, in this case some scripting being done on that site. It basically renders IE useless for most sites and encourages the workers to use alternative browsers like Firefox.

 

[Richard]

Thanks for the ideas & I'll try them. As for an IT department, we don't have one. To the degree we might get accused of having one, it's me /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

 

[MossRoad]

So that means that U are IT!

Sounds like a game of TAG! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Richard]

/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

The above ideas didn't help.

I might add that the problem is sporadic... not ALL of the news articles blank out on me like that. Probably more than half but know that sometimes they DO work.

Also, I've NEVER had that problem (while in IE) from any other site than Foxnews!

hmm... perhaps my pc is shorting out as I drool over some of ... (SOME?) their front women...

hmmm... nah... they're all dogs.

/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[getut]

I'm assuming since you mentioned this is work that you have at least a couple machines behind a router/firewall..... so if my assumption is correct, can you duplicate the issue from any other machine behind that same router/firewall or is it limited to only your machine?

 

[Hakim]

Richard,

I assume that you have already run "AdAware" or some othe r "spyware" cleaner software. Spyware can definitely cause this kind of behavior.

I had this exact same problem with FoxNews, and our CodeKing Ibrahim provided the fix. This is a little tricky Richard, so you might want to get some hands-on assistance from a person you know & trust /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif.

Navigate to this directory on your local drive:

C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc

You need to find the file called "hosts."

Copy that file to a back up place on your drive. Rename that file to "backup hosts.txt"

Go back to the directory at C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc

and open the "hosts" file in a text word processor.

Remove everything in the file, except the first two lines, which should say this:

# localhost: needs to stay like this to work
127.0.0.1 localhost

Save the file. Close the file.

Restart IE and it should show all of the proper images.

REMEMBER, this is an advanced move. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif If you have any doubts about what you are doing, do not attempt it! Because IE probably will not work at all if you botch it. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

If it does get messed up, you can rename the backup file to "hosts.txt" and move it back to the directory it was originally in.

Hope this helps,

 

[Richard]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( or is it limited to only your machine )</font>

It is at work, you are correct. As far as I know, my machine is the only one affected. It's been this way for couple months now and I've just not worried about it.

It's been in the back of my head all this time and finally has irked me enough to do something (ask)

 

[Richard]

Can/may I post the contents of my HOST file here? I've backed it up.

 

[sugarmaker]

Hi Richard,

I believe I had the same problem with an internet connection at work last year. Symptoms were the same, I believe:

<ul type="square">
[*]certain pages would not load under IE. My chief offenders were www.weather.com and www.americanexpress.com
[*]non-loading pages would fail usually, but not always (90% failure rate roughly)
[*]same computer on other internet connections (eg. at home) were fine
[*]other computers on same network behaved the same (had same failures on same websites)
[/list]

I found I could improve the situation by reducing the MTU size on my computer as described in "Method 3" here .
Beware this takes a bit of time and doing, and be sure to back up your registry, as always, before using the registry editor.

Before making any changes, try the ping tests described to help determine whether MTU size changes will help you.

Good luck!