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Note This document is based on the original spoken Support WebCast transcript. It has been edited for clarity.

William Keener: In this presentation, we will discuss issues that prevent a Web site from displaying or working correctly in Internet Explorer. Some of the specific types of problems we will discuss are listed here on slide 2. For example, some of the text or images may be missing from a Web page, or the text and images may overlap or be distorted in some other way; for example, the text may be too large or too small. The navigation on the Web page may be broken, so that links or image maps or menus might not work correctly.

Your personal information may be automatically filled into a Web page form when it shouldn't be, or perhaps that information is not automatically filled into a form when it should be. You may be unable to submit a form, or you receive an error message, or you just can't print a Web page. You may notice that your customizations are not remembered when you return to a Web site. For example, favorite stock quotes or local weather may not be displayed as you had specified previously. Perhaps new windows that are supposed to open or pop up, don't, or, a more common issue, maybe new windows do pop up and you don't want them to.

Only a decade ago, most Web sites were simply static HTML pages that displayed only text and images. Today, many Web sites are more like software applications than static Web pages. For example, a Web site can display your local weather or stock quotes. Your bank's Web site may be able to display your account information and allow you to pay bills or trade stocks online. Some Web sites allow you to purchase products or interact with a customer service or support representative via text-based chat.

The complexity underlying these types of Web sites make it much more difficult to troubleshoot issues from a client or browser perspective, but there are some common issues and troubleshooting strategies that you can use to resolve many issues.

First, let's take a look at how a Web page gets displayed in your browser (slide 3). Some of the more common components that you might find on a Web page today are shown on the right-hand side of slide 3. In addition to the HTML source code for a Web page, images and other multimedia files may be included, and some sites use ActiveX® controls or Java applets, which are basically software applications that are built into the Web page. Many Web sites also use scripting, which can be either a client-side script, such as Microsoft® Visual Basic® or Java script, or server-side script, such as Active Server Pages (ASP), CGI, or Perl script. Scripting can also make the Web page behave more like an application.

All of these components of the Web page are stored on a Web server or host computer or computers on the Internet, or in the case of ActiveX controls, for example, they may actually be stored on your local computer. These components are rendered or run by the Internet Explorer files listed on the bottom of this slide.

The IExplore.exe file basically launches and hosts the Browseui.dll and Shdocvw.dll files. These files work with other Windows® components to provide the Internet Explorer user interface and the browsing window, and they host the individual rendering engines for each of the different types of content on the right-hand side of this slide. The Urlmon.dll file matches a Web site address up with a known protocol, such as HTTP, and helps to determine the security zone to run the Web site in. It also invokes the Content Advisor, if it's enabled, and creates the initial request for the Web page content, called a GET request.

This request is passed to the Wininet.dll file, which takes the GET request and creates a session with the host computer or the Web server to actually get the content for the Web page. Wininet.dll also handles caching of Web pages and cookies, and it passes authentication information, such as a user name and password, to the Web site, if required.

The individual rendering engines are listed separately in the boxes on the bottom of this slide. For example, the Mshtml.dll file is responsible for rendering HTML content and the Msxml.dll file is responsible for rendering XML content. Msjava.dll, along with the other Microsoft virtual machine or VM files, compiles Java-based applet code and executes it in a virtual machine. The Vbscript.dll and Jscript.dll files are responsible for executing client-side scripts, specifically Visual Basic and JScript.

Also note the third-party extensions component in this diagram. Internet Explorer supports not only ActiveX controls, but Browser Helper Objects, tool bands, and other components can be installed to add custom functionality to the browser, such as additional toolbars, wallpaper, or a banner ad.

All of these components run in the same memory space as Internet Explorer and can sometimes cause issues with Internet Explorer or one of its components and result in a problem displaying a Web page. In this presentation we're going to focus primarily on problems that are related to the components on the bottom and right-hand side of this slide, but you should be aware that problems with components on the left-hand side of the slide can also cause issues with displaying a Web page.

When you submit a request for an Internet Web page to be displayed in your browser, both that request and the content for the Web page itself, are sent through a series of other computers, and possibly other software components. For example, when you type www.microsoft.com into the Address bar in Internet Explorer, the Urlmon.dll file, as mentioned, builds a GET request and sends that to WinInet to go out and actually get the contents of the Web page.

This information goes through a gateway, which is a computer on the Internet that's operated by your Internet service provider, but before the GET request is sent, we actually have to do some name resolution. Because the Internet operates based on IP address, someone has to tell us what IP address is associated with the www.microsoft.com domain. This name resolution request is sent to a DNS server, probably also at your Internet service provider, and that name resolution request is then forwarded to other DNS servers on the Internet, until a DNS server is found that knows the IP address for Microsoft.com.

After the IP address is resolved, and then we can forward the GET request on to Microsoft.com. That request also is going to go through the gateway machine. It's going to go through various routers, which are other computers on the Internet that provide routing for that request, and the information is going to be returned through those same or different routers on the Internet, and possibly all of these requests and content are also going to travel through a firewall or proxy, depending on your Internet configuration. That could be another computer. It could also be a software application. You can have a firewall installed on your local computer, so the request is going to go through that firewall as well.

Any problems along the way could cause a Web page to not display or work correctly in your browser. But again, for the purposes of this discussion, we're going to focus on problems on the host on the right-hand side of this slide and problems related to Internet Explorer components on the bottom of this slide.

Before you attempt to fix a problem with the way a Web page is displayed or works, you should try to identify the extent of the problem, analyze the exact conditions under which it occurs, and isolate the problem as much as possible by doing some testing (slide 4). For example, try some other Web sites with similar content or components.

Does the problem only occur on one Web site? If so, the problem may be in the source code of that particular Web page. If this is the case, you're not going to be able to do anything to fix it on the client side. On the other hand, if the same problem occurs on all Web sites with the same type of content or components, then it may be a problem with Internet Explorer on your local machine. In this case, you might try to test the Web site from another computer with the same or a different Internet connection and with the same or a different version of Internet Explorer or even with a different browser. This could help you isolate the problem to a specific browser version or type of Internet connection.

If you're an advanced user, you might also examine the HTML source code for the Web page. If you understand something about HTML source code, you may be able to isolate the problem to specific types of HTML content, such as tables, or to a particular component, such as an ActiveX control.

One fairly simple issue to deal with is no multimedia content on a Web page (slide 5). As I mentioned, Web pages can include a variety of multimedia content, including animations, videos, sounds, and images. If you can view or hear these components in, say, Windows Media® Player, but you can't see or hear them when they're embedded in a Web page and the problem occurs on all Web pages, then one of the first things you'll want to check is the Advanced tab of the Internet Options dialog box. Make sure the appropriate items are enabled here. We'll discuss some other issues related to multimedia content, particularly images, later, but this is a good first step if a particular type of multimedia content doesn't work on any site.

Another problem you may experience is a script error on a Web page (slide 6). This occurs when there is a problem running client-side script, either JScript or Visual Basic script, contained in the HTML source code for the Web page. Server-side scripts run on the host or Web server computer, so you won't see a script error in Internet Explorer as a result of a server-side script failure, but you may see other symptoms in that case.

A client-side script error will also manifest itself in a number of different ways, such as an error message, a status bar icon, or simply a broken or an improperly displayed Web page. As a general rule, you should test the page on another computer, if possible, another browser. If the problem results in a script error on another computer, and particularly on another version of Internet Explorer or another browser altogether, then it may actually be a problem in the HTML source code of the Web page. Again, in this case, you're not going to be able to do anything to fix the problem on your client computer. But if the problem is specific to only one client, then some standard troubleshooting might involve disabling display features in Internet Explorer, deleting cookies, temporary Internet files, maybe history, and perhaps installing the latest scripting engine. Knowledge Base article 181698 ("How to Troubleshoot Script Errors in Internet Explorer") discusses these troubleshooting strategies for script errors.

Another possibility is disabling any antivirus software or more specifically disabling its ability to scan your temporary Internet files or downloaded program files folders. That could potentially also cause a scripting error, so if you could disable that feature, it might narrow the problem down to an antivirus product.

By default, newer versions of Internet Explorer do not display a notification (slide 7), in terms of a dialog box or an error message, when you encounter a script error. Instead, a notification icon is placed on the status bar, as shown here on this slide. You can click the status bar icon to view the details of the error, which are not really helpful in troubleshooting the problem, unless you're a script developer. Even if you are a script developer, you would probably want full access to the source code for the Web page to be able to troubleshoot the problem.

The various symptoms here with the default setting for displaying or not displaying a notification for every script error, notice that if you have the status bar turned off in Internet Explorer, you're not going to get any notification at all, because the only notification is in the status bar area.

The kinds of things that you might experience really vary according to what the Web page is using scripting for. The navigation of the Web page could be broken. Links might not work. Menus might not work. You may not be able to submit a form. You might not be able to log in to the Web page. It really varies depending on exactly what the Web site is using client-side script for. It's important to be aware that with the default setting you only get the status bar notification, which you may not notice, and particularly if you don't have the status bar enabled, you won't see that and the Web page will just be broken.

If you enable the setting to display a notification about every script error, as shown here on slide 8, then you will see the dialog box — that's also here on slide 8 — whenever a Web page client-side script results in an error.

If you are a script developer and you have a script debugger installed on your computer (slide 9), then you can uncheck the option to disable the script debugger (this option is unchecked by default) and the error dialog displayed up here on slide 9 will allow you to launch your script debugger whenever an error occurs. Again, this is primarily useful for Web page or script developers, and ideally you would have full access to the source code for the Web page in order to debug it.

It's also helpful, though, to note here that even if you're not a developer, you could wind up seeing this dialog if you've installed an application, which installed a script debugger and enabled it. This may have been done accidentally or unknowingly to you, and suddenly you're getting this error asking you if you want to debug. If you're not a developer and you don't want to see this error, you can go into the Internet Options dialog and on the Advanced tab, just check the box to disable script debugger, and we will go back to using the setting for whether or not to display the standard script error notification.

There are also a variety of problems that could occur with a Web page as a result of simply having your computer's clock set wrong; for example, if it is set to a time or date in the past or in the future (slide 10). This can cause Internet Explorer to not accept cookies from the site or not honor the instructions in the HTML source code that tell Internet Explorer when to expire a Web page or some Web page content. Obviously you could also experience this problem if cookies are blocked by Internet Explorer or by a third-party application.

Again, the symptoms here could vary. The page may not be updated. For example, you've asked the page to display local weather and news, and that information never gets updated. It could be a potential symptom, or again, perhaps you've asked it to display local weather and news, and when you return to the Web site it doesn't display your local weather and news. Those are the kinds of problems you would experience here. Again, one issue being that your clock is set wrong. The other issue being that cookies are blocked.

In Internet Explorer 5.0, cookie settings are configured separately for each security zone on the Security tab of the Internet Options dialog. In Internet Explorer 6.0, cookies are automatically accepted in the Local intranet and Trusted sites zones, blocked in the Restricted sites zones, and you can configure your own settings for the Internet zones on the Privacy tab of the Internet Options dialog box.

Distorted or unreadable content is another problem that can have a number of different causes (slide 11). A poorly written Web site is obviously something that you can't do anything to fix in Internet Explorer, but some problems can actually be caused by settings on the client computer. For example, a Web site that is designed to be displayed full screen at a display resolution of 1024×768 with 32-bit color may not look right at 640×480 with 256 colors, so you may want to adjust your display resolution to resolve that problem.

Additionally, if you configure Internet Explorer to display Web pages using a custom font or colors on the General tab of the Internet Options dialog, some Web sites may not display the way they were intended to. To avoid this, many Web sites today use what are called cascading style sheets. This allows the Web page developer even more control over how their Web pages display. They can specify the font styles and sizes to use on the Web page, as well as text, link, and background colors.

These fonts and colors may be displayed instead of the ones that you specified on the General tab. The result is a Web page that displays the way the author of the Web page intended, but it may not be how you expected to see it. If you really need to override the style sheet used by the Web page for accessibility reasons, you can create your own style sheet and then select it in the Accessibility dialog, which is available from the General tab of the Internet Options dialog.

The converse of this problem would be if you have style sheets disabled in Internet Explorer, the Web page may not display properly, because it's not using the style sheet that the author intended for it to use. Internet Explorer versions 4.0, 5.0, and 6 do not have a user interface option for disabling style sheets, but Internet Explorer version 3.0 did. This was primarily an issue with folks who had disabled style sheets in Internet Explorer 3.0 and then upgraded to Internet Explorer 4.0 and possibly later Internet Explorer 5.0. There are not many of those machines out there any more, so we don't see this quite that often, but there still is a registry setting that is respected by Internet Explorer for disabling style sheets. This is documented in Knowledge Base article 183717. Again, if a Web page is distorted, or you have text that overlaps other text, or text overlaps images, you might want to take a look at that registry key and make sure the style sheets are not disabled.

AutoComplete (slide 12) is a feature in Internet Explorer that suggests possible matches for entries that you type in the Address bar or in a Web page form or user name and password boxes on a Web page. The first Knowledge Base article referenced on this slide (217148) just discusses the AutoComplete feature generally, and how to use it.

By default, Internet Explorer only enables AutoComplete for Web site addresses, so that when you type something into the Address bar in Internet Explorer, we'll try to find a match for previous entries that you've typed and offer them to you via a drop-down box, as you type in your address. For Web page forms and user names and passwords on forms, this feature is not enabled by default, but the first time you run Internet Explorer and encounter a Web page that has a form or user's name and password on a form, then we'll prompt you and ask you if you want to enable it.

Some of the types of problems you might experience with AutoComplete are, your computer pauses or appears to hang as you are typing into a form on a Web page. This could be a result of corrupted AutoComplete information. Knowledge Base article 251787 discusses some things that you can do to troubleshoot this issue. One of the first things, of course, would be to clear the forms and password information in the AutoComplete history. You can do this from the Content tab of the Internet Options dialog.

Another possible issue is that AutoComplete doesn't work on a particular Web page. You don't get any previous entries that you've typed for forms, so it doesn't automatically suggest your first name when you type the first few letters. This could be a result of the Web page author or content developer having disabled AutoComplete for that Web page (article 290641). Some sites do this for security reasons. For example, if you're on a Web site that you would expect people might access from a public Internet kiosk, you don't want the previous user's information to display in the AutoComplete, so the Web site may have disabled this feature. Sometimes you can find this out by just doing a View Source on the Web page, and in the <Input Type> tag for the forms, you'll find <AutoComplete="off"> with the word "off" in quotes. If you find that in the Web page source, then that would indicate that the author has intentionally disabled AutoComplete for that Web page.

Another possibility is that the Web site address changed, so user names and passwords in particular, the AutoComplete feature does that on a per URL basis, so it's going to be specific to the individual site that you're logging into, and if the Web site address changes, then AutoComplete may no longer work. Article 221479 discusses this issue and possible workarounds. Then, Knowledge Base article 306895 simply lists some general troubleshooting information if you're having a problem with AutoComplete.

Another potential problem you could experience is related to object hosting in Internet Explorer or document object hosting, as it's also called (slide 13). Internet Explorer supports the ability to host documents that it can't render natively, using a separate application, but hosting the document inside the Internet Explorer browser window. For example, Microsoft Office documents, by default, will open in the Internet Explorer window instead of opening in the appropriate Office application. You can control this feature.

The information on this is in Knowledge Base article 162059, and basically it's a check box available from the File Types tab of the Folder Options control panel. There's a Browse in same window check box, and if that's checked, then the default behavior with Internet Explorer and Office is to open the Office document in Internet Explorer. If you uncheck that box, then Internet Explorer will launch the separate Microsoft Office application and host the document in the Office application. You may want to do this if you find that there is some functionality that you cannot access while the document is hosted in Internet Explorer.

Again, it's mainly a feature intended for displaying the document and it doesn't have the full range of functionality that is in Microsoft Office, so there may be some things, if you want to manipulate the document, you would want the file to host outside of the browser. Another option, if you don't want to change the setting globally to open the Office document, if it's a link on a Web page, is that you can always right-click and choose the Save Target As option in Internet Explorer; save the Office document out to a separate file on your computer, and then open it in Office that way.

Another common object-hosting issue is related to Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format, or PDF, files. The Adobe Acrobat Reader installs an ActiveX control that allows these documents to be hosted in Internet Explorer as well, so there are some potential issues. Obviously if you have ActiveX controls disabled, if your security settings are too high, they may not be hosted in Internet Explorer. The Web page may just be broken as a result. The two specific examples that are listed here on this slide are examples of problems that you might experience.

Number one, the server is sending the wrong MIME type. The MIME type is basically what's used by Internet Explorer to determine what type of file we're dealing with, and the server can send, and usually does send, that MIME type information along with the file. Internet Explorer will use that. So if the server is sending the wrong MIME type and it tells us that this file is a text file, for example, instead of a PDF file, then we may not open the file in Internet Explorer, and we may give you a dialog box asking if you want to open the file or save it to disk. There's not much you can do about this particular problem, short of contacting the administrator or the Web developer of the Web site and asking them to configure their server to send the right MIME type for PDF files.

Another example is using the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer on Windows XP 64-bit Edition. Windows XP 64-bit Edition includes both a 64-bit and a 32-bit version of Internet Explorer. The 64-bit version of Internet Explorer will not run any ActiveX controls. Because the Adobe Acrobat extension for Internet Explorer is an ActiveX control, it won't run, so you will also get a prompt to either open or save to disk. You won't be able to open it. You'll have to save the file to disk. A workaround for this is to actually use the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer, which is also available in Windows XP 64-bit Edition.

I should also mention the prompt to save a file to disk or to open it. In addition to documents that can be hosted inside Internet Explorer, other file types that either can't be hosted in Internet Explorer or can't be launched in a separate application or sometimes can be launched in a separate application, you'll get a prompt to either open or save the file to disk. For some file types this is hard-coded into Internet Explorer to always show you this prompt, for example, files that can be executed, files with an .exe extension or a .bat, a batch file, or on Windows NT® platforms, .cmd files, which are the command processor script files on NT. These files can be executed and could potentially contain viruses or other malicious code. Therefore, Internet Explorer is always going to prompt you to open or to save those files to disk, so that they don't open and execute automatically.

You cannot disable this setting for these unsafe files, but for other file types, you can, and this is also controlled in the File Types tab of the Folder Options control panel. There's an option to confirm open after download, and if the file is not considered an unsafe file, then you can uncheck (clear) the confirm open after download option, and the file will be opened automatically, instead of prompting you to open or save the file.

A couple other issues you may experience are number one, Java applets on a Web page (slide 14). Again, the Microsoft virtual machine, or VM, is the component that is used to compile and execute Java applets on the fly. VM was not included with the original version of Windows XP. All other previous versions of Windows included a version of the Microsoft VM, but it was not included by default with the original release of Windows XP. It is included with Service Pack 1 for Windows XP, so if you don't have a virtual machine, you're obviously not going to be able to run a Java applet, and you can obtain the virtual machine, again, by installing Service Pack 1.

The other bullet here talks about Netscape-style plug-ins, which are similar to ActiveX controls, in that they're applications that basically embed themselves in the Web page and provide different sorts of functionality. The Apple QuickTime Viewer, for example, is an example of an add-in that has been traditionally a plug-in. Internet Explorer versions 5.5 Service Pack 2 and later no longer support plug-ins. As a result, your plug-in would have to be updated to run. The Apple QuickTime, for example, has been updated to an ActiveX control. They have an ActiveX control version that's available now that will run in Internet Explorer, so that's also something to be aware of.

We talked briefly before about images not displaying on a Web page. Here is some more detailed information on why images, in particular, might not display (slide 15). First of all, it might not display if it's not a supported image type. Internet Explorer is capable of rendering the image types that are listed here on this slide, for example, .bmp files, .gif files, .jpg files, but if it's a file type that's not listed here, we don't have native support in Internet Explorer to display that image, so you would have to have some sort of separate application that had added an extension to allow Internet Explorer to display that particular file type.

The other cause that we talked about previously was you have the option to show pictures turned off in the Advanced tab of the Internet Options dialog. This would mean that no images display on any Web page. A similar feature is available from a PowerToy that's available from Microsoft called the Toggle Images. This tool basically adds an icon to the tool bar in Internet Explorer that lets you dynamically turn on and off images on a Web page. That could obviously cause this problem as well.

The other potential issue is that your machine is configured to block scripts or ActiveX controls, or perhaps even cookies. You can do all that in Internet Explorer options, but you could also have a separate application, such as a firewall, that is configured to block scripts, ActiveX controls, Java applets, referral information, or simply advertisements. Symantec's Norton Internet Security, for example, can be configured to block all of these features. If you do that, there are some images that may not appear, banner ads in particular on Web pages, some of them rely on referral information, so when you're visiting one site, information is sent to another site with a referral header that says, "Here is the Web site that referred me here. Give me this image." If you've got that sending of referral information turned off, then some of the images may not display.

Another potential issue is problems with new windows (slide 16). This may be when you click a link on a Web page that is supposed to open a new window but it doesn't. There's also a feature, if you right-click a link, you can choose the option to open it in a new window. That may not work. Nothing may happen, or the window may open but it may be blank, or perhaps you receive a script error. This can occur if the Urlmon.dll file we discussed earlier is not properly registered. There are also some registry keys that are relied on for this setting and some other files that could potentially cause the problem.

There are several versions of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit that released with the problem that caused the Urlmon.dll file to not get registered properly. As a result, if you have installed a customized version of Internet Explorer that was created by your Internet service provider or your corporate administrator, for example, you could run into this problem. The typical resolution is to run a command as discussed in Knowledge Base article 281679. You can just run a command line to re-register the Urlmon.dll file. There are several other files that you can also try re-registering, if new windows don't open or they're blank or you receive a script error.

Another potential issue that is receiving more attention recently involves the pop-up and pop-under windows. These are new windows that get created on top of the current Internet Explorer window you're currently browsing in, or perhaps they pop up behind the current Internet Explorer window. These new windows are used primarily for advertising, but Web sites can also legitimately use pop-up windows for other features on the Web site, such as help, or perhaps navigation of the Web site uses a pop-up window. We hear this most from folks, of course, who don't want to see pop-up advertisements, so I thought I would discuss this issue.

Basically, pop-ups are created using some script in the Web page. Typically it's client-side script, and it's this window.open command in the Web page that creates the pop-up window.

There are a number of options for getting rid of pop-up windows, keeping in mind, again, that there are some sites that may legitimately use pop-up windows for critical help or navigation features on the Web site itself, so you want to be careful about how you address this issue. You may get rid of advertisements, but you may also get rid of some other useful functionality on Web sites.

The options to disable pop-ups, number one, you could add the Web site that creates the pop-up window to your Restricted sites zone. Active Scripting is disabled by default in the Restricted sites zone, so that would disable the Web page from creating the pop-up using client-side script. This is a little trickier than it sounds, because it's not always clear what Web site actually contains the client-side script that creates the pop-up.

For example, you could be visiting widgets.microsoft-a.com, and widgets.microsoft-a.com could actually host content from the widgets.microsoft-b.com domain. It may be the content from that widgets.microsoft-b.com domain is where the code exists to create the pop-up window. In this case, you opened widgets.microsoft-a.com and widgets.microsoft-a.com is displayed in your Address bar, but that Web site is actually hosting content from widgets.microsoft-b.com, which creates the pop-up window. In that case, adding widgets.microsoft-a.com to your Restricted sites zone is not going to stop the pop-up. You would have to add widgets.microsoft-b.com to the Restricted sites zone. Again, how you determine, in that special case, where that content is coming from, can be a bit tricky, and you may actually have to look at source code embedded into the Web page when you visit widgets.microsoft-a.com.

Another option, which is rather drastic, is to disable Active Scripting in the Internet zone. I've added a big warning here that this is going to break most Web pages. As we've discussed previously, if you've got ActiveX controls or Active Scripting or other features disabled in Internet Explorer, a lot of functionality on Web sites are not going to work. This is a drastic, last-resort option. If you're in some sort of really super secure environment and you absolutely need the pop-ups to go away and you can live with a lot of other useful Web page functionality going away, then you can disable Active Scripting for the Internet zone through the Security tab of the Internet Options dialog.

Another option — and probably the best option — is to obtain a third-party product that blocks pop-up windows. Some of these products do this on a per-domain basis, so you can add specific domains to the list and it will block pop-ups that are created by those specific domains. I've added one such example here, and that's the EarthLink Pop-Up Blocker. EarthLink is a large Internet service provider, and their Internet service provider package actually includes a free Pop-Up Blocker. That's another option, and as I say, probably the best option, which is to obtain some third-party product that blocks pop-ups. There are a number of such products out on the market.

Another problem I'd like to discuss briefly is not really a Web page content problem per se, but it has come up recently, so I thought I would discuss it (slide 17). And that is, your home page or your search page in Internet Explorer is changed to an unexpected Web page. When you install any kind of software this can happen, particularly if you install software from your Internet service provider. They may want to set your home page to their home page. Browsing software, including customized versions of Internet Explorer that were created with the Internet Explorer Administration Kit, can also modify your home page and your search page. Those are a couple of things that can cause this.

In many cases you can simply go into the Internet Options dialog and choose the Reset Web Settings option, and it will reset your home page and search page to the default settings. Again, if you've installed a customized version of Internet Explorer, the default settings are going to be what were specified in the Internet Explorer Administration Kit, so that's going to take you back to those same pages instead of the default Microsoft home and search pages, but if you've installed an uncustomized version of Internet Explorer from Microsoft, the Reset Web Settings command from the Internet Options dialog will, in most cases, reset your home and search pages to the Microsoft defaults.

Internet service providers cannot create, with the Internet Explorer Administration Kit, policies that override that, but corporate administrators who use the IEAK can override that and force your home page setting and search pages to a particular page that they choose. The Reset Web Settings command will not reset the home page in those cases, because they're registry keys that are written on your local machine that override that and tell it to always use this particular home page and this particular search page.

Unfortunately, a few virus writers have discovered this setting. If they can trick you into running a virus or other malicious code on your machine, they can also set your home and search pages to some page of their choosing and also configure the setting to prevent you from changing the home page or the search page via the Internet Explorer user interface.

The two articles that are referenced here on this slide, with respect to home and search page, will give you some troubleshooting steps that you can follow to change your home page (320159) or search page (323869) back to whatever you desire it to be, if for some reason that you can't change it.

Finally, the last problem I want to talk about is one that we really don't see that much any more, but it's still possible, and that is a broken frame set page (slide 18). This will basically appear as a blank Web page, or frames don't appear on an existing Web page. The problem here is actually in the HTML source code, and I wanted to throw it out just to indicate that there are some problems displaying a Web page that you're not going to be able to do anything to fix on the client computer or in Internet Explorer.

In this case, the yellow <body> tag, at the top of the code on this slide, shouldn't be there. The <body> tag belongs in the <noframes> section below the green <body> tag that I have indicated here would be the correct location for a <body> tag in this HTML source code. The <body> tag prior to the <frameset> tags basically cause Internet Explorer and most newer browsers to render the page as a blank page.

To wrap up (slide 19), let's talk about just some general troubleshooting approaches here for troubleshooting problems displaying pages or broken Web pages. As I've indicated, there are a number of Internet options that can potentially cause problems.

For example, if you've got cookies blocked in Internet Explorer or if you've got your security settings too high, you could obviously experience a number of these problems. So a typical troubleshooting approach might be to first try restoring the default settings in Internet Explorer.

I should note that this slide is a little misleading in that it's not restoring the default with respect to Internet Explorer 6. You'll notice the next-to-last bullet has you move the Privacy slider to Accept All Cookies. That's not the default for Internet Explorer 6. The default is Medium for cookies instead of Accept All.

In terms of troubleshooting problems displaying Web page content or content on a Web page where functionality is broken, we want to sort of restore defaults and perhaps not restore defaults, that is, perhaps be a little more lenient in the kinds of things that we will allow (slide 20).

The first thing we'll want to do is on the General tab, and we really haven't talked about languages, but if Web pages are displayed in the wrong language, it may be because you have that language selected as the default in the Internet Options on the General tab. The first thing you'll want to do is make sure the correct language is at the top of the list when you click on Languages.

Then we'll want to click on Accessibility and clear all of the check boxes. These are the options that we discussed earlier, with respect to displaying your own custom font, style, font size, or colors on a Web page or perhaps a cascading style sheet that you created for displaying Web pages. You'll want to clear all those boxes and see if we can display the Web page correctly using the default settings that the author of the Web page intended.

Also on the Security tab, I say click Default Level. Microsoft Internet Explorer ships with some default security levels for each of the zones. Medium for the Internet zone, so we're going to allow Active Scripting. We're going to allow scripting of signed ActiveX controls. We're going to prompt you before downloading signed ActiveX controls. We're not going to prompt you at all and we're not going to download unsigned ActiveX controls. There are some sensible security faults built into the Default Level that are designed to, number one, keep you safe, but also allow functionality of Web sites, so I would start with Default Level.

Obviously, if the page is on your local intranet and you know the author of the Web page and trust them, you may want to lower the security level for a zone to troubleshoot the problem. One of the more common things that you might run into in a corporate environment is that someone inside your corporation has created an ActiveX control to do some sort of functionality, but they didn't sign the control. By default, Internet Explorer doesn't prompt you for ActiveX controls that are not signed with a digital signature, so you would actually have to lower your Local intranet zone setting in order to allow the unsigned control to run.

Then, on the Privacy tab, as I say, moving the slider to Accept All Cookies is not the default setting, but it allows Internet Explorer to accept all cookies from any Web site. It could be a useful troubleshooting step to determine whether the problem is related to cookies being blocked.

Finally, on the Advanced tab, there's a Restore Defaults button. That restores all of the Advanced tab settings, some of which we've talked about previously, to their default settings, and that can be a useful step in troubleshooting as well.

Some of the things that this may not resolve, on the Advanced tab, some of the default options may not be what we want. There's an option, for example, to Enable Third-Party Browser Extensions. We talked about browser extensions early on in the presentation and how they can add custom functionality, such as tool bars, to Internet Explorer and could potentially interfere with displaying or the workings of the Web page. So we enable third-party browser extensions by default. Once you restore defaults, then of course you're still enabling them, so you may actually want to try to disable that setting. There may be some other changes to the Internet options in Internet Explorer that you may want to make to troubleshoot the problem.

We've talked about privacy and security settings already. Instead of the default privacy setting, you may want to accept all cookies. I mentioned the local intranet unsigned ActiveX controls case, where you may actually want to lower the security settings for the Local intranet zone to allow unsigned ActiveX controls that your network administrator has created for you. The Internet Options dialog is, again, a place, after we reset the defaults, we would want to perhaps change some settings that are specific to the problem that we're trying to troubleshoot.

Another option would be clean booting. A clean boot is performed a bit differently, depending on the operating system. There are a number of Microsoft Knowledge Base articles on how to perform a clean boot for each of our operating systems. If you just query on the words "clean boot" in quotes, you'll find those. Windows XP, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition include a tool called the Microsoft System Configuration (Msconfig) utility that you can use to do this.

One caveat I would make about clean boots is that you may not want to do a strict clean boot according to the clean boot articles that are in the Knowledge Base when you're troubleshooting a problem rendering or functionality of a Web page. The display issue that I talked about previously is a very good example. If you're having problems displaying a Web page that was designed to be displayed full screen at 1024×768 with 32-bit color, a clean boot, according to our Knowledge Base articles, is going to switch you to 640×480 display resolution. That's an essential step in performing a clean boot when you're troubleshooting problems like your computer won't shut down properly or things like this, but in terms of displaying a Web page that was designed for high resolution, it's obviously not a good option. So you would want to make some adjustments, primarily in the form of display settings and Internet connections.

The other big issue, with respect to the clean boot, would be that you may not have an Internet connection after you clean boot. Obviously you want to back off of the clean boot a bit and add your network connection back, if you need to get access to the Internet to test the problem.

Then finally, with respect to advanced troubleshooting, I mentioned here a repair or reinstall of Internet Explorer or the operating system. That may be necessary in some cases where you've got damaged or corrupted Internet Explorer files or registry settings. A repair or reinstall of either Internet Explorer or the operating system should resolve that problem.

I should also mention here the upgrading your version of Internet Explorer. If you are running a previous version of Internet Explorer than the one that's currently available, instead of reinstalling the same version of Internet Explorer, just download the newest version and install it. There are a number of security patches that have been released for Internet Explorer in the past, so it's a good idea to get the most current, up-to-date versions that are available at any time. That solution may be to just upgrade to the next version, rather than reinstalling the same version.

Finally, I would reference a couple of additional resources for you (slide 21). One is another WebCast presentation on "MIME Type Handling in Internet Explorer." We talked about MIME type handling with respect to document-object hosting and file downloads in Internet Explorer. This WebCast that's referenced here on this slide is really good overview, if you are interested in the technical details of how Internet Explorer does MIME type detection.

Finally, the Internet Explorer Support Center on support.microsoft.com is available for frequently asked questions, and, of course, Knowledge Base articles. With that, that ends our presentation, and I'll turn it over to Otto for the question and answers.

Otto Cate: Excellent. Thank you very much for the presentation, William. Before we jump into the Q&A, I'd like to share a couple of program notes with our audience real quick. If you would like a copy of the PowerPoint® slides, be sure that you download the file from the Web site. If you joined this broadcast late and would like to review the content again, the on-demand streaming media file is available. All that content is available via the Past Support WebCasts page under the Internet directory there. To access all of that information, including details on upcoming events, you can always take a look at support.microsoft.com/webcasts.

The Q&A portion of the Support WebCast is intended to encourage further discussion of the topic that we've discussed today. In addition, one-on-one product support issues are really outside the scope of what we're able to address. If you do need some more complex technical assistance, feel free to contact a Support Professional via phone or via a Web incident.

I'd like to introduce Joel Baxter. He's one of William's colleagues, and he's going to be helping us out with the Q&A. It's good to have you with us, Joel.

Joel Baxter: Thank you very much.

Otto: First question: Can you discuss the use of the MS Web DVD object and any initialization issues with SP1?

Joel: In this particular forum, no. Unfortunately we'll have to defer that to the Internet Explorer Client Development group and a Product Support Professional.

Otto: Okay. Can you possibly explain a little bit more about what a debugger is, and whether or not it could be harmful, or anything of that nature, to have it active or installed?

William: Yes. In the context of this presentation, we talked about a script debugger, which is a separate application that you install on your local machine that allows you to debug scripts, Visual Basic or JScript, for example. They are primarily used by a developer who's writing the script code, and they shouldn't be harmful. In fact, they're included with a number of Microsoft products. For example, the Visual Studio® line of products will actually install a script debugger on your machine.

There's also a Microsoft script debugger download, separately available from Microsoft.com that you can install. It just allows a Web page developer to find out exactly where, in the script code, the script error on a Web page occurs. It shouldn't be harmful to your computer at all, but again, if you don't want to see a prompt to debug, if you're not a developer and you're getting a prompt to debug, you can go into the Advanced options and turn off script debugging.

Otto: I'm receiving an error message related to the ActiveX control, specifically, "An ActiveX control on this page is not safe. Your current security settings prohibit running unsafe controls on this page." I don't want to necessarily change my security settings, but I'm wondering what makes an ActiveX component unsafe, and what needs to necessarily happen to flag it as safe?

Joel: There are a number of reasons why that error can be displayed. While the security settings don't want to be changed in this particular question, it may be necessary in order to do that. Now, if we approach the source of the dialog itself, the error is indicating that this particular control that's being loaded or is attempting to load, has been flagged as being unsafe. Unsafe, in this sense, can be a derivative of the control. Is it signed by a developer to guarantee that it actually was distributed by that developer and hasn't been tampered with? That would be the Download unsigned ActiveX controls security option under the Security tab.

There's also a situation where, using script, you can initialize certain ActiveX controls via scripts. There is an Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe option, in the Security tab also. That option, if enabled or set to disable, will control whether or not this dialog appears, if you're trying to initialize the control via script.

There are also situations where antivirus products that have the ability to actively and passively control the use of ActiveX controls on a machine may intercept the attempt to load one, and defer you to not being able to load it. Again, this will vary depending on antivirus product manufacturers, but I would definitely consult the security settings, just to see which setting actually is going to apply to this control, in an environment where you feel safe to test it.

Obviously, in the situation of the question, if you don't want to change the security settings, you may want to contact the content provider and inform them of the message that you're receiving. They may be able to provide you additional assistance.

William: I would add, just in terms of the last part of the question, in terms of what makes a component unsafe, with respect to the default security setting for the Internet zones, I mentioned before that we block unsafe controls, which Joel mentioned, and we talked about perhaps the need to lower your security settings for, say, a local intranet Web site that tries to load an unsigned control, which could result in this error message.

Also, in terms of the default security settings for the Internet zone, when ActiveX controls are created by a developer there's a flag that's set to say this control is either safe for scripting or it's not safe for scripting. If the control is flagged as unsafe for scripting, that option is also disabled, by default, in the default Internet zone. And you're quite right; that's not a security setting that I would ever change for the Internet zone and allow any random Web page to script a control that's marked unsafe for scripting.

That control may have been marked unsafe for scripting and in fact, there have been a number of Internet Explorer security patches that have been released in the past to flag particular controls as unsafe for scripting for that very reason, because the control could potentially be scripted by some random Web page to, say, delete files on your local computer. So that's not a case where you would want to lower the security settings.

It's a very good question, and the bottom line, in terms of what makes a control unsafe is, it's a function of the control and the way it was developed and some settings in Internet Explorer that, by default, flag certain controls as unsafe for scripting.

Otto: Thank you very much for the extra information. We've actually got a couple of printing from Internet Explorer–related questions, and I'm going to throw these out and see if this is something we can address. The question, for instance, is: What about problems getting the Print Page button to actually print the entire width? A lot of the times when I'm printing a Web page, generally the last 10 to 12 letters on the right are cut off by the printer. It seems to be happening on multiple types of printers. Are there any settings, or anything of that nature, that might help alleviate that issue?

Joel: One of the common problems that we've seen typically involves older-model printer drivers. The model is mentioned in the question. There are situations where Internet Explorer bases its renderable region on the printer driver's definition of what the printable area of a piece of paper is.

Now there are certain situations where the driver itself reports it with margin space on either side, and Internet Explorer reduces the width based on what the paper size is, versus what the printer driver says the paper size is. You may need to consult with your printer driver manufacturer for updated printer drivers.

There are situations where you may have to revert to using a custom printer driver by the manufacturer versus the one provided by Microsoft, if Microsoft is the provider of the driver you're using. Again, they vary from model to model. In certain circumstances there are updates available from Microsoft to adjust that functionality into what they call the non-printable region of a page layout.

You may consult with the printer drivers. You may change the drivers themselves and test with an updated driver, or revert to the Microsoft driver, if you're using a third-party driver for the printer. Apart from that, initially, that's an introduction to the types of information we can give out during this presentation. We would have to follow-up a little more intrinsically with a Product Support Professional.

Otto: What does the acronym MIME stand for?

William: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension, and don't let the mail part confuse you; it has nothing to do with mail anymore, but that's what the acronym stands for.

Joel: It's not exclusive to mail anymore.

William: Right, I'm sorry, not exclusive to mail anymore.

Otto: What are the advantages or disadvantages of using the Force Offscreen Compositing?

William: Force Offscreen Compositing is basically an option that was added to Internet Explorer 5.5 that fixes an issue with animated content over a Terminal Services client session. There were instances where the animated content on a Web page might flicker when you were browsing a Web page from a Terminal Services client session. This option was added to enable you to turn on Force Offscreen Compositing so that you got rid of the flicker on the Web page when you were connecting to a Terminal Server. That's primarily the advantage, is to eliminate a flicker of animations on a Web page when you're connecting to a Terminal Server.

Otto: What could cause a form, which is to re-post itself with changes, to not display the updated page on some PCs? It seems to only occur on certain PCs that are all running the same version of Internet Explorer.

Joel: I'll try to approach that as best I can. In a situation where you're using a form and you're resending the same URL for the same content information, content expiration may be an issue here for the clients that don't work. If the content is going to be expired and no longer retrievable from the clients' perspective, you may retrieve the content again from your cache prematurely and actually retrieve the same page. There are situations where setting the cache values to never update or update only the first time Internet Explorer is opened may actually cause the browser to retrieve it one time from the server, at that given URL, and then continue to retrieve it from its own personal cache. This varies.

It's actually a broad problem. While it appears on a few machines, there are a variety of reasons why that could happen. Depending on how the page is authored, if it's reposting based on meta refresh tags in the composition of the page, the security settings for permitting meta refresh may be disabled on those particular clients, not allowing them to refresh as they're designed to.

Again, there is much more that can be gone into than this presentation time will allow, and again, we would recommend a follow-up with Product Support.

Otto: What's the likelihood of utilizing a pop-up blocker, like you had mentioned during the presentation, what's the likelihood, that while using one of those, it also interferes with printing functionality?

Joel: This is Joel. I'll follow up with that. Much in regards to William's presentation on this is that there are valid windows that need to be created. If the methods that these third-party utilities implement follow the model of window creation that valid Web sites use, versus the ones that undesired Web sites use, much will follow the same design.

It's hard to differentiate between what's a good pop-up and what's a bad pop-up. If you eliminate them all, printing obviously can fall into that category with regards to some certain designs of Web pages. For instance, ones that use ActiveX controls or Java applets may actually provide you a printer-friendly version link in the page itself. What that would do is to provide you a pop-up window with a formatted version of the data that you want to see, and you would print from that window. Obviously, if you're prohibiting the pop-up window behavior, you may run into the situation where it's completely impossible to generate a printable version of the particular content that you want.

Some dialogs associated with printing are also treated as pop-up windows based from HTML origins. They can also be blocked, depending on the behavior and the application that you're using to prohibit the pop-ups with.

Yes, it can cause problems with printing, in very specific ways. The general consensus is that if you're going to block all pop-ups, you will affect yourself negatively in some manner.

Otto: When you click on an Internet Explorer shortcut it occasionally opens in an existing Internet Explorer browser that's already running. Can you force that to open in a new browser?

William: Yes, so the question sounds like we are doing multiple-window browsing. What's happening here is we have multiple instances of Internet Explorer running at the same time; you click a link in one Internet Explorer window and it opens the page in another running instance of Internet Explorer, instead of the one that you're currently browsing in. Probably the reason it does that is the link on the Web page is coded to open in a new window. And since you have multiple windows already opened, it defaults to opening in one of the previously running instances of Internet Explorer.

There's a new check box option in the Advanced tab of the Internet Options dialog, starting with Internet Explorer 5.01. It's called Reuse windows for launching shortcuts. If you check that box, we should reuse windows, so basically the behavior similar to what you're seeing now. If you uncheck that box, we should open a new window, so that would be one of the first things to check is the Reuse windows for launching shortcuts setting in the Advanced tab of Internet Options.

Can you force it to open a new browser? Obviously you can right-click the link and choose Open in New Window, and it will always open a new Internet Explorer window for the link. That would be the way to force it, would be to right-click and choose Open in New Window from the context menu; but you may want to experiment with the Reuse windows for launching shortcuts setting first.

Otto: I have a site that uses frames and that displays properly, but when we click on a specific frame and tell it to print that selected frame, it prints the selected frame as a set of frames but not the whole page. However, if I tell it to print the background color and images, it all prints properly, but unfortunately we have a policy against printing the background items. What would cause that type of behavior?

Joel: In all the time that I've actually been supporting this, that's actually an unusual issue that I haven't been approached with yet. The possible reason as to why the printing background images would apply is that it would render most of the content as a single image in the way that it's laid out, including the way the frames are set up accordingly. Again, this is going to require extensive investigation by PSS in order to get to the root cause of that particular problem.

Otto: Regarding the overlapped text that you had mentioned a little earlier on in the presentation, I have a Windows 95 PC with Internet Explorer 5.0, and a particular Web site on this machine shows with that overlapped text. However, if I look at the same Web site on Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP with the same screen resolution as well, the Web site's text shows fine. Is it theoretically an issue with the version of Internet Explorer in that case?

William: Not specifically, and I would offer a couple of suggestions. The first possibility is, this is a Windows 95 computer, and I bet that Internet Explorer 3.0 was installed on this computer at one point in time, and style sheets were disabled, which as I mentioned in the presentation, there was an option on the General tab of the Internet Options dialog box in Internet Explorer 3.0 to disable style sheets. That option is no longer in Internet Explorer versions 4.0, 5.0 or 6, but the registry setting is still respected. Slide 11 has a Knowledge Base article reference of 183717, which you should take a look at and see if you have the registry setting set to disable style sheets. That would be the most common cause of a problem like this.

The other possibility, if you have, as we also mentioned during the presentation, is on the Accessibility tab or the Accessibility dialog that's available from the General tab of Internet Options, there options to ignore colors, fonts and font sizes specified on Web pages, as well as to format documents using your own style sheets. You'll want to uncheck all those boxes and make sure we're displaying the Web page as the author has intended it to be displayed. If those options are not checked, then I think you should look at the Knowledge Base article referenced on this slide and see if the registry setting for style sheets is disabled.

Joel: I'd like to add something to that. With regards to the versioning information that the visitor had actually asked, if you're dealing with Internet Explorer 5.0, the rendering changes that were made different between version 5.0, version 5.5, and version 6 vary greatly. If this is particular site, there may be an underlying support issue with regards to the Windows 95 and Internet Explorer 5.0 not supporting some of the syntax or script. For instance, if the page is using pure XML to do its positioning of where text goes in the page and how it gets rendered, then Internet Explorer 5.0 may not provide it sufficient support to render that correctly and, therefore, the text isn't aligned according to the Web author's choices. There is valid concern that it is actually presentable correctly in a later version of Internet Explorer, just based on the rendering adaptations the later version incorporated. Yes, Internet Explorer 6.0 can render it, possibly due to design changes that weren't available in Internet Explorer 5.0.

Otto: If you set the security level too high when you're installing Windows XP, can you change it afterward? It looks like the listener is currently not allowed to download Windows Updates from the Microsoft Web site.

William: Yes, in the default uncustomized versions of Internet Explorer, you can adjust the security settings via the Security tab of the Internet Options dialog box. If the Security tab is not available or you can't change the settings there, then chances are you have some registry settings that were created, ideally, by a corporate administrator or some Group Policy settings in an Active Directory® environment that restrict you from changing your security settings. If you can't change them on the Security tab, I would suggest you contact your network administrator and see if they have restricted your ability to change security settings for some reason.

Otherwise, yes, you can just go to the Web page and then go to the Tools menu. Click Internet Options and then click on the Security tab and look at the setting for the zone that that Web page is in, and you can traditionally change the security setting there. Again, you want to be very careful about changing and particularly you want to be careful about lowering your security setting for the Internet zone, because it could allow a malicious Web site to run some sort of malicious code or put a virus on your computer, so you want to be very careful about lowering your security settings for the Internet zone.

Otto: Are there any benefits to using Sun's version of Java instead of or alongside of Microsoft's virtual machine?

Joel: The virtual machines are meant to execute Java applet code, class structures. There are situations where a specific Java developer will take advantage of unique class implementations that are purely supported only by Sun and their version of their Java Runtime Environment. The JRE, as it's declared from their download site, actually is meant to be installed in a side-by-side fashion, so it can run alongside Internet Explorer's Microsoft virtual machine.

There are advantages to using it in such that if you encounter an application on a Web page that requires unique class handling that's only available through the Sun virtual machine, you'll have it available to you. The virtual machine actually installs with a type of plug-in type behavior, so that it can be invoked as needed. In later versions of the Runtime Environment they actually give the ability to specify which will be the default handler for Java applet code. There are advantages to keeping both running on a machine, if you have need in the circumstances that you may run into, where there are applications that specifically require Sun's Java Environment.

Otto: We're currently running into an issue where images are not loading on the page. It simply shows the little square with the red X in the middle. After enabling the error report notification option in Windows, the indication is that these might be script-based problems. However, this issue seemed to occur after the installation of SP1. We're currently on Windows 98 SE. As a temporary workaround, I've gone back to Internet Explorer 6.0 without Service Pack 1 and have had no problems since. Is that a known issue? Is that something you guys have seen?

William: No, not that I'm aware of. I would suggest a support incident, probably, for this particular issue. I don't know that there's that much we can say about it here, other than ask a bunch of questions. Number one, I would want to know is this only happening on one particular Web page. Does it happen on a lot of different Web pages? I would want to look at some examples of those Web pages on another Windows 98 Second Edition machine with Internet Explorer 6.0 Service Pack 1, and see if I could actually reproduce the problem on those particular Web pages. There's not much beyond that.

I don't think it's a known issue. I don't like the temporary workaround here, because it has you uninstall the service pack, and the service pack is the latest and greatest. Service Pack 1 for Internet Explorer 6 has a number of security and reliability enhancements over the original release of Internet Explorer 6 that I think you should really be running. I would really recommend a support incident here to see if we can't get this resolved and figure out what's going on.

Joel: But, I'd like to add, from a support standpoint, and the way we would start troubleshooting this, is that with the release, as William has said, with Service Pack 1 came a number of code implementations, workarounds, and changes, but in addition to that, security updates. Depending on how the pages are written, they may actually be written in a manner that Internet Explorer deems unsafe and doesn't provide the content because of it. A perfect example is you load a page from the Internet, but it contains references to some images on your local hard drive. Obviously that's going to be a concern, for security's sake, and the content would actually be prohibited just because of the attempt to load something local from your machine. It may not be as drastic as that, but the changes are buried between Internet Explorer 6 and Service Pack 1 if the users themselves have deemed that that's the most significant change to the system before this problem occurred.

William: The way I would test that, and the reason I say we need a support incident probably for this question is, I would get a machine in our lab, right, that I could connect to the Internet and try this page with a lower security setting. I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that this customer try accessing the page with a lower security setting, because it may in fact be one of the security enhancements that is included in Service Pack 1 for Internet Explorer 6 that block this page for a legitimate reason, because it could potentially do something bad to your computer. So I wouldn't suggest that you lower the security settings, but if you contacted a Microsoft Support person, they could potentially test this and see if lowering security settings fixes it and try to get to the bottom of the issue.

Otto: This next question might also be handled better via a support incident, but I'm going to throw it out here, just in case this might be a known issue as well. Currently using Windows XP Home and I'm current with all my patches and updates. Using Internet Explorer 6 64-bit version, I recently had to reload my operating system. Since that time, when I'm using Internet Explorer, every time I get hit with a pop-up or pop-under or theoretically click a link that's programmed to open in a new window, it freezes the new and original windows up, and essentially all I can do is CTRL+ALT+DELETE out of it. Is that something you guys have seen?

Joel: Personally, I have not. There are definitely some design changes and implementations from 64-bit Windows. William made references to some of the information earlier.

William: I would point out that he mentions that he's running Windows XP Home Edition and then 64-bit Internet Explorer, which is not compatible, right. The 64-bit version of Internet Explorer is only included with the 64-bit Windows XP product, and Home Edition is 32-bit, so we're not running a 64-bit Internet Explorer here probably, but go ahead, Joel, if you had more to add on that question. I just wanted to interject that.

Joel: No, that's a pretty good interjection. At this point, we definitely need to clarify versioning information between the two products. There's nothing known about running 64-bit Internet Explorer on Windows Home XP.

William: That is, in fact, impossible, so I suspect we're running Home Edition with Internet Explorer 6 32-bit, and the problem is that opening new windows hangs up. The suggestion, I've switched back to the slide here (slide 16) on Microsoft Knowledge Base article 281679, and there's a command in there to reregister the Urlmon.dll file potentially could be a candidate here, but it's very difficult to say, based on the information that we have. A support incident is probably the best approach.

Otto: We're currently looking at the final question that's in the queue, and that is as follows: How do you save changes to the View/Encoding/Western European (Windows) option? (On the View menu, point to Encoding to see this option.)

Joel: I'll take this. My assumption of the question is that the user is visiting a Web site and the encoding method used on the page is different than what they prefer it to be. Internet Explorer determines, on its best effort, if it's not referenced in the source of the Web page, what character set it should be guided to use. Web page developers reference a charset (character set) tag in the makeup of the page to indicate what type of encoding should be used to render the content. Since this is a viewable option, this is meant to be done per session with the Web page.

Unfortunately, there's not going to be a method to sticking this particular page in some type of historical fashion to always retain this value for the next time you visit it. If it's preferential and required that the user sees the site in this particular encoding value, then you may wish to have the content developer of the Web site itself be notified to update their character set information in the source of the page so that it renders in Western European.

Otto: We got a couple more questions here. It looks like we still have a few minutes to address these. This might be handled via a support incident a little bit better also, but again, I want to throw it out just in case. When I go to certain Web sites on my Windows 95 Internet Explorer 5 PC, I've received the "Windows Install on Demand" box to which I answer OK. Then, I'm receiving another message that simply says, "The Install on Demand cannot connect to the required Internet server."

I gather, from the question, that this might be occasionally happening or something of that nature, but is that something that you guys have seen? It almost sounds like we might need to get more information and have a Support Professional take a look at this.

William: Sure, and that's certainly possible. The Install on Demand feature allows Internet Explorer to go to the Web and get additional add-in components, for example, language packs, so you might see this when you're reading e-mail. For example, somebody sends you e-mail or you visit a Web site that's in a different language, using some of the functionality that Joel just talked about in the last question. If you don't have that particular language pack installed, you may get prompted to install it on demand from the Microsoft Windows Update server.

We're having a problem here getting the Windows Update server to install the add-on package that Install on Demand is trying to add to your version of Internet Explorer, and that could be a problem getting to the Windows Update site itself, or if you're running a customized version of Internet Explorer that was created via the Internet Explorer Administration Kit, your administrator can also override the default Windows Update URL and route you to their own site for updates or Install on Demand components. That could be a potential issue here too, if you're running a customized version of Internet Explorer, but to answer the question as best we can, yes, for some reason, in the retail uncustomized version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, we're having trouble getting to the Windows Update site to get the add-ons.

Joel: I'll add a little extra to that. Given the older version of Internet Explorer that's referenced in the question, it's quite possible that the extra components that were required by the Install on Demand feature may not be on the Web at the address that was distributed when the product was installed on the machine. For instance, if it was referencing to go download the component from Microsoft.com/download/ie5somecomponent.cab, if the components were moved from that address, it's obvious that the Install on Demand functionality will no longer be able to retrieve the component you need, because the address is no longer valid. That's a possibility.

As products are actually taken down from the Web because of their supportability or redistribution, some of these problems can arise if you have to add a component after Internet Explorer is no longer available on the Web. Obviously, a support incident would be able to clarify this with much better detail.

William: The solution, in the case I think that Joel is talking about here, would be to just upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, right. That should resolve the problem. The question mentioned Internet Explorer 5, which, in my mind, could mean 5.0, 5.01, 5.5, so if we're not running Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack 2, then we need to go install that version.

Joel: Correct, because at this point, since the user mentioned it is Windows 95, Internet Explorer 6 won't install on this platform.

William: Right, so Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack 2 would be the latest browser for Windows 95, but that should resolve this problem, if it's the case that Joel talked about. Otherwise, we're just having trouble accessing the Windows Update site for some other reason, if the URL is correct.

Otto: With that, it appears that we have answered all the questions that were submitted to the queue today. I'm going to wrap up our session. I want to thank all of our listeners for coming out and listening to the presentation, and I definitely hope that this information was useful and helpful to you. I, of course, wanted to thank William and Joel for giving us a great presentation and running through the Q&A.

You can submit any comments or feedback, suggestions for future topics that you'd like to see, there at our e-mail address, supweb@microsoft.com. It should be up there on the slide for you.

I hope that everyone has the opportunity to tune in again soon. Thanks and have a great day.