IE8 issue: A little help from you Windows folks

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Working on a PC for a family friend so obviously this is a freebee.

Dell Dimension 3000 P4 2.79 GHz 80GB HDD 512MB RAM which I will be boosting up to 1.5GB when the RAM gets here. Running XP home SP3.

Certain webpages in IE8 will open briefly and redirect at the bottom flasing by with plugin names and show something to do with about:blank until finally the web page comes up blank with a little "false" text on the top of the page. Machine is running Symantec Endpoint Protection and was running some form of McAfee which I removed. These pages open fine in Safari. Did notice all of these pages are embedded with Adobe flashplayer content.

Also noticed Google Chrome wasn't opening but found that for some reason Google Chromes sandbox feature and Symantec Endpoint don't play nice together. So basically the only workaround for that is to manipulate the chrome shortcut to turn off the sandbox feature.

The reason I bring up Chrome and kind of thought it might have something to do with the IE8 issue is because on the properties of the blank "False" page it is called a chrome html document. I thought maybe previously Chrome might have something to do with it since Chrome was set as the default browser when it was acting up, but I've set IE as the default since then.

This happens in IE with or without add ons in any user account. Also disabling Symantec does nothing. Also does this in Safe Mode with Networking.

Things I've done:

Chkdsk repaired some damaged clusters associated with Symantec Endpoint.
Cleared browser cache, history, etc.. Restored IE to defaults.
Removed McAfee along with McAfee site advisor.
Cleared DNS cache.
Ran ccleaner for files and invalid registry entries.
MBAM came up clean.
Hijack This! comes up surprisingly very clean.
SAS found 141 tracking cookies, no big deal there.
Uninstalled/reinstalled Adobe flashplayer/Shockwave, even Reader for the hell of it.
Installed Java.

I haven't gone through uninstalling Symantec Endpoint because that seems to me at this point grasping at straws. Plus its kept the machine this clean for this long and maybe they paid for it and might not like the idea of trashing it. I haven't taken any steps to uninstall or reinstall IE8 because that is going to be a little more work than I want to get into without a definitive solution.

Any wisdom would be appreciated. I might not respond back until tomorrow sometime since I'm working on this machine between a steady flow of my regular Mac repairs, but I bring up what I know in the meantime without the machine sitting in front of me.

 

[mjbasford]

Cleared browser cache, history, etc.. Restored IE to defaults.

1 - does this include proxy settings? remove any, if you haven't already checked
2 - check installed plug-ins.

Also, i doubt it is the problem since safari works, but worth a quick look, check the hosts file

hope this helps

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

1 - does this include proxy settings? remove any, if you haven't already checked
2 - check installed plug-ins.

Also, i doubt it is the problem since safari works, but worth a quick look, check the hosts file

hope this helps

Sorry, forgot to mention I checked for proxy settings and the hosts file is clean. Disabled various plugins and as mentioned in my 1st post ran IE without add-ons and same thing happens.

 

[mjbasford]

sorry, missed the line about the add-ons

 

[dbdawn]

I don't know of anything else that could cause that problem. It might be corruption of the user profile. Do you have the same problem from another profile on the system.

I googled and found the following info from this site. Maybe worth a shot?

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

regsvr32 urlmon.dll
regsvr32 actxprxy.dll
regsvr32 shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 browseui.dll
regsvr32 jscript.dll
regsvr32 vbscript.dll
regsvr32 oleaut32.dll

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

I don't know of anything else that could cause that problem. It might be corruption of the user profile. Do you have the same problem from another profile on the system.

I googled and found the following info from this site. Maybe worth a shot?

Yeah, as mentioned in my first post its not a user corruption. Even happens logged in administrator in Safe mode. The only thing I can think is when I uninstalled the Adobe stuff I did it through add/remove programs and didn't actually download the Adobe uninstallers. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow with the Adobe Uninstaller download and give that script you mentioned a try.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Update on this one:

Uninstalled Adobe flashplayer user the Adobe uninstaller = no change, although I didn't really expect there to be.

Uninstalled IE8 and brought it back down to IE6. Problematic pages seem to work besides telling me I'm using an unsupported browser. Reinstalled IE8 and right back to where I started.

Tried the above in the command line, doesn't recognize secedit as a command?

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Further update:

Content adviser is turned on in IE.

You'd think maybe MS could come up with a better indicator than a blank white page with the word "false" at the top right (maybe "blocked")? Don't know if they know the supervisor password or not.

No clear indicator on how to turn it off without knowing the supervisor password besides calling MS. I was thinking maybe safemode logged in as administrator? But doesn't really matter. At least I know what the problem is. Just thought I'd update the thread to maybe help others in the future. Thanks for replies!

 

[fixitdaz]

Came across this Hope it helps

if you lost the password for Content Advisor, you need to edit the Windows Registry to reset the password to nothing. From Start > Run type regedit and click OK.

In the Registry Editor expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand SOFTWARE, expand Microsoft, expand Windows, expand CurrentVersion, expand policies. Click on the Ratings folder to expose the Content Advisor registry keys. Highlight the key called Key and delete it either with your delete key or by right-clicking and choosing delete.



Close Registry Editor. Close all instances of Internet Explorer. Open IE and choose Tools > Internet Options from the menu, selecting the Content tab for the Content Advisor. Click the Disable button. You will be required to enter a password in order to proceed. Create a password to turn off Content Advisor and click OK. To get rid of the password, you can repeat the steps above. Your Content Advisor is now turned off.

Link

 

[dbdawn]

Content Advisor Password Remover v1.01 from Nirsoft.
I woul not even think of this, that is weird how IE shows a blocked page.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Came across this Hope it helps

if you lost the password for Content Advisor, you need to edit the Windows Registry to reset the password to nothing. From Start > Run type regedit and click OK.

In the Registry Editor expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand SOFTWARE, expand Microsoft, expand Windows, expand CurrentVersion, expand policies. Click on the Ratings folder to expose the Content Advisor registry keys. Highlight the key called Key and delete it either with your delete key or by right-clicking and choosing delete.



Close Registry Editor. Close all instances of Internet Explorer. Open IE and choose Tools > Internet Options from the menu, selecting the Content tab for the Content Advisor. Click the Disable button. You will be required to enter a password in order to proceed. Create a password to turn off Content Advisor and click OK. To get rid of the password, you can repeat the steps above. Your Content Advisor is now turned off.

Link

Appreciate that. I haven't completely confirmed that is the issue they were having besides them saying they were getting "kicked offline". This just seems like the most obvious problem. Not sure whether I should just kill it and assume that was what they were talking about or not? They do have two daughters. When I told him about content adviser being on he didn't exactly sound like he knew what I was talking about. So I'll throw the RAM in it and wait to see if he can give me more details on the problems they are having.

 

[callthatgirl]

Also noticed Google Chrome wasn't opening but found that for some reason Google Chromes sandbox

I would run the Chrome stripper and reboot. Chrome is causing a lot of problems right now for many of our users.

Just a thought.

 

[MobileTechie]

Tried the above in the command line, doesn't recognize secedit as a command?

secedit does not exist on XP Home, only Professional

 

[wtigger]

IE8 has caused a LOT of mayhem in a lot of ways. When I can verify IE8 is the culprit, I remove it and install IE7...

When IE8 first came out, it hosed many Internet connections...

And I try to encourage people to use Firefox instead...

 

[rusty.nells]

I'd try disabling Symantec and/or running the McAfee removal tool.

 

[dbdawn]

I am just throwing stuff out here, but this was mentioned on another thread.