FIX: Internet Explorer 6 may unexpectedly close when you try to use digest proxy authentication to connect to secure (HTTPS) Web sites

When you try to use digest proxy authentication to connect to secure (HTTPS) Web sites, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 may unexpectedly close. This problem occurs when Internet Explorer connects to secure Web sites by using the Microsoft Windows Internet (WinINet) API together with digest proxy authentication.

This problem occurs because the Wininet.dll file incorrectly handles HTTP 407 error codes that occur during digest proxy authentication.

This problem is fixed in Windows Internet Explorer 7. To obtain Internet Explorer 7, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Service pack information

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows Server 2003. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hotfix information

To resolve this problem, apply the hotfix that is described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

To work around this problem, do not use the HTTPS protocol. Additionally, you can use a different proxy authentication method, such as NTLM or Kerberos.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Internet Explorer 6. This problem was first corrected in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2.