Saturday, August 02, 2008

Internet Explorer Problem Blocking Access To Sites

Beginning last night, a bug appeared in Internet Explorer 7.0 which is denying access to this blog and other web sites. When you open this site and others, after opening the home page IE returns an error message which reads: "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://advanceindiana.blogspot.com Operation aborted". I tried to talk to Microsoft support about this problem last night, but they wanted to charge me $59 to discuss the issue. If you check out the feedback on the Explorer support page, you will find numerous users reporting the same problem. You can avoid the problem altogether by switching to a different web browser such as Firefox. It is obvious there is either a bug in the latest update for IE 7 or an Internet virus has invaded the browser.

UPDATE: Thanks to the helpful tips from several readers. The problem seemed to be with how Site Meter interacts with IE 7. A simple change in the privacy setting on Site Meter seemed to resolve the problem.

Starting yesterday, Sitemeter has caused thousands of blogs to fail in Internet Explorer 7 for some reason. Both Hot Air and Michelle Malkin sites have been affected. According to Charles Johnson, the problem exists on Sitemeter’s own website. It appears that Sitemeter changed its coding yesterday without warning its users, and without testing it before going live with the changes.

15 comments:

Wilson46201 said...

Microsoft issues updates only on Tuesdays so it's highly unlikely IE7 changed behavior suddenly on Friday. Considering Firefox has no troubles, it's likely something very subtle was changed on the HTML created by blogger.com that trips up only on IE.

Are other sites affected or is this something peculiar to AdvanceIndiana?

Sir Hailstone said...

Glad I use Firefox on a Mac!

Gary R. Welsh said...

The problem isn't peculiar to Advance Indiana, Wilson. Readers have had problems with other sites as well.

Laura said...

Gary-If you run SiteMeter I think that was the problem. Just in case it happens again and you want to tweak things.

artfuggins said...

I have the problem with this site and 3 or 4 others...AT&T wanted to charge me $99 for Tech Support Plus to try and diagnose it since their free service couldnt find the problem. I may have figured it out as I am not able to access this website through a back door.

Scott said...

It appears to be unique to Vista.

I have a computer with Vista on it and after running the most recent series of updates, I cannot view many websites.

But another computer I have that runs Windows XP loads those same websites just fine.

Scott said...

Apparently, it is traceable to Sitemeter:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/02/sitemeter-attacks/

Bart Lies said...

See if you got security patch KB902400 installed yesterday. Look in the Windows/system32 folder for the latest file folders with kb902400 as part of the name.

I bet you do.

I do not have an uninstall for ir, but some might be able to:

C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB902400$\spuninst\spuninst.exe

My update log says the update failed partway through. This may be the real problem, the update aborts for many of us.

Bart Lies said...

Or... maybe not ;=)

Unknown said...

Sir Haistone,

I have a Mac at the school where I teach. Unfortunately my office doesn't have a window. I'd like to throw it out the window.

Fred Ramos said...

Mac Rules

Jon E. Easter said...

I'm surprised you aren't blaming this on the liberal media or Barack Obama.

artfuggins said...

I have Vista also....maybe the problem is just with Vista

artfuggins said...

Jon, I think you are right...this is a trick by Obama.......

Unknown said...

No, I have another computer that does not have Vista. It was blocking it on that version too.