Spyware Sucks : Your questions answered, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7

Problem - unable to change Internet Explorer's home page

sandi — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:22:00 GMT

Another cry for help received via email...

"You are my last best hope... I am just a regular guy from NY (not the city) with a problem. My homepage in IE7 is locked on a page I dont want. I try to change it in Internet options and it even says the homepage I want but it always goes to this other page. I set the page a month ago and now it wont go back. I even reinstalled IE7 but no luck. Any ideas? I can even send you a few bucks if you can help me out..."

Manufacturer/ISP Locking

Some computer manufacturers and suppliers of internet access set IE to their choice of home page and lock this setting via the registry. Hijackers use the same trick. The locking is done using registry settings as per the following:

Home Page Setting Changes Unexpectedly, or You Cannot Change Your Home Page Setting (Q320159)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q320159

Specific registry settings affected are:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel] - DWORD "HomePage"=dword:00000001 (grays out the whole section)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] - DWORD "NoSetHomePage"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions] - DWORD "NoSetHomePage"=dword:00000001

Protective software

Check your protective software (especially antispyware and antivirus). Spybot Search and Destroy, for example has a feature that will lock your home page. Other products that may lock your home page including Ad-aware's Ad-Watch, SpywareBlaster, SpySweeper, Norton AntiVirus, McAfee VirusScan and Antispyware, and both versions of Zone Alarm.

If you are using Spybot S&D, check your 'Immunize' settings which may be locking your home page.

Malware and viruses

If your computer home page is set to about:blank against your wishes, or any other page, you have a malware problem. For advice on fighting malware, check out the link below - the page is a little old, and probably needs updating, but overall the advice is still good:
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/tshoot.html

Google Desktop causing problems

sandi — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:03:00 GMT

Here is today's email question: "Dear Sandi, I would really appreciate your help. I've been trying for ages to find out what is wrong with my IE7 but there doesn't seem to be anything useful on the internet that I can find... Whenever...(read more)

Your questions answered: Being charged for support calls

sandi — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:53:00 GMT

I received an email today that says:

"I have an issue that occurred once I upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 on my computer running Windows XP Media Center Edition. For some reason, I can no longer change the icon for any of my IE shortcuts that I have on my desktop. I know that this is not major issue but it is quite annoying as I customize my icons for both organizational and identification purposes.

I searched the Microsoft Knowledge base and Article ID: 935779: An Internet shortcut does not display the correct icon in Internet Explorer 7 was found. However, it tells me to contact Microsoft about a supported hot fix or to just wait until the next service pack comes out that contains this hotfix. Well, I called Microsoft and they actually wanted to charge me a support call to get someone to assist me with this because they stated that they no longer give out hotfixes.

I am sure that you know what I told them they could do with their charge. So, I was wondering if you had a resolution to this issue for me. This problem does not happen on my Vista computer or my other computer running Windows XP Pro both running IE 7."

Ok, let me put this as plainly as I can - the statement made by the person at Microsoft technical support that "they no longer give out hotfixes" is, to put it bluntly, bullshit.

With regard to an attempt to charge you for a support call this can be a little more tricky, and a lot depends on what you say when you call Microsoft.

When requesting a hotfix, it is very important that you tell whoever takes the call, right from the outset, that you are only calling to get a hotfix, and it is also very important that you know the hotfix number (in this case 935779).

You phone up and you say "My computer is exhibiting the symptoms described in Hotfix 935779. Please send me the hotfix".

Don't get into a discussion about the symptoms being exhibited by the computer. Don't ask for or accept any sort of troubleshooting assistance. Don't discuss any other issues. You phone, you ask for the hotfix, you tell them what the hotfix number is, you tell them that your computer's symptoms match those in the hotfix knowledge base article, and that is all that is as far as you go.

If the technician tries to discuss your PCs symptoms and tries to diagnose or troubleshoot, politely repeat that you are only calling to obtain the hotfix and you do not want any further assistance. The technician will probably warn you about the dangers of hotfixes and may read through a disclaimer statement but that should be that. You'll be asked for your email address and a link to download the hotfix will be sent to you.

Or, you can avoid all the fuss and request a hotfix by email from here:
https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1410&WS=hotfix

Today's question - running IE6 and IE7 on the same machine

sandi — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:14:00 GMT

I received an email today that asked:

"Does MS have a method to run IE6 and IE7 on the same machine?"

There are a few hacks out there that purport to allow you to run IE6 and IE7 on the same machine, but they are just what I describe - hacks - all of which have problems.

As my readers may know, Microsoft offers Virtual PC as a free download to anybody who wants it. They also offer a VPC hard disk image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, and either IE6 or IE7 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. This VPC image will expire on 17 August 2007 but I have no reason to believe that they will not issue a new VPC image once this one expires, just like they have done before.

You can download the VPC image here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en

You can download your free copy of Virtual PC here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

More info about Virtual PC:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

FIX: Unable to access particular web sites

sandi — Wed, 09 May 2007 07:26:00 GMT

This morning I received this email:

"For the past two plus years, I have been able to access a website www.bmwsporttouring.com. For the past two weeks, I cannot access this website from my desktop computer (high speed internet). We also have a laptop and we can access it from the laptop only.

We saved this site as a favorite. When we click on the favorite in the lower left hand corner of the tool bar we see “connecting” http://www.bmwsporttouring.com...” and then we get the page cannot be displayed. We are connected and the website is not encountering any problems. When we type in the url: www.bmwsporttouring.com we get the same reaction. We restored the pc to the point that we were last able to access this site and still no luck."

Ok, first thing to do. Make sure the site works (yep it does)

Next, see if you can access it via IP address. Go to Start, Run, type "CMD" (without the quotes) to open a command prompt window.

Now type "ping www.bmwsporttouring.com" (without the quotes). This will get you an IP address - you will see this in the command window:

Pinging bmwsporttouring.com [207.191.183.137] with 32 bytes of data

Now, open IE and enter 207.191.183.137 into the address bar - can you access the site using the IP address? If yes, you most likely have a problem with a hidden file called a HOSTS file. This is a hidden file, so you will need to turn on the option to view hidden files (Control Panel, Folder Options, View - turn on the option to view hidden files and folders)

Depending on your operating system, and a few other variables, you may find the HOSTs file in the following locations (note that %systemroot% is c:\windows\ on a standard machine):

%systemroot%\
%systemroot%\system\
%systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc (NT based systems such as XP)

Embedded OS such as WindowsCE use the registry:
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\Tcpip\Hosts\host name)

Why did the user experience this problem?

The most common cause of this problem that I have seen is Web accelerators that use the HOSTS file to create the illusion of faster web browsing can actually cause problems rather than speed things up.

Programmes that use the HOSTS file to speed things up have one basic flaw - they work by recording IP addresses saving you that millisecond that it takes for your Web browser to convert a URL to an IP address. If the IP address of a Web site changes for any reason you can no longer get to the site until the recorded IP address is updated in the HOSTS file (which invariably does not happen).

What else can go wrong to cause the "page cannot be displayed" error?

Do not use the "Automatic" cache setting in IE (IE Tools, Internet Options, General Tab, Browsing History/Temporary Internet File settings). The way the "Automatic" setting works is IE monitors how often a web page is updated. But, there is a bug in the feature in that IE will eventually decide, seemingly at random, that a page is never updated and stops checking.

Check your IE cache size. Traditionally Internet Explorer has set the size of its cache as a percentage of total hard disk size. That was fine years ago, but now that hard drives are getting so large Internet Explorer can set its cache to ridiculously large sizes (2 Gig and more). This is simply too large for Internet Explorer to be able to handle. Reduce the size of your IE cache to around 50 Meg (maximum of 150Meg) and empty your existing cache (make sure you also delete offline content).

One more thing that may work:

Try running the following command from a CMD window:

ipconfig /flushdns

Lots more advice for pre-Vista operating systems here:
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/answers/16.html