CoNetrix

Blog: IE8

After the December 2010 Internet Explorer 8 updates I was seeing some strange behavior for a couple sites including gotomeeting.com.  Users could get to the first page, but if they clicked on any of the links they would get a page cannot be displayed error.  It appeared like the user could browse to the first page via the proxy, but all subsequent pages were being sent direct. 

It turns out the IE8 updates changed the behavior of the WPAD script that we were using and we had to edit the following line:
proxy = "PROXY proxy.company.com:8080; DIRECT";

We had to change it to look like:
proxy = "PROXY proxy.company.com:8080";

After making this change the sites in question began to work.

General, IE8, IE,
 

I was trying to post a job on Yahoo hotjobs (using a new ThinkPad running Windows 7), but after I would choose a location & select "Post Job", it would take me back to select a location.  After trying several times across two days, I finally tried to submit a "help form", but I was unable to determine if the form was actually being submitted and I never heard back from Yahoo.  After about a week (and I tried several different days through the week), I was going to sing into Google Analytics.  When I tried to log in with our account credentials, I received the error message “Your browser’s cookie functionality is turned off. Please turn it on.”  I knew it was not turned off, but followed their help and went to Tools, Internet Options, Privacy, Advanced, and verified "First-party Cookies" were not blocked.  While trying to discover what the problem was, I looked under websites to see if it was listed as a blocked site.  I found more than 100 sites listed as blocked including all the major search engines (I did not add them, so they must have come from the factory).  When I removed Yahoo.com, I began to be able to post jobs.

Networking, ThinkPad, IE8, cookies,
 

While debugging a problem that required uploading files to a website, one of the files started getting an error at the start of the upload instead of at the end.  This didn’t make sense because the problem being debugged was after the file was uploaded to the website.  This looked like another problem instead of the original problem we were hunting.   We suspected that the problem was connected to the file being uploaded instead of the website.  When we looked for the file on the Desktop it wasn’t there.  This was odd.  Went back to Internet Explorer and the file was displayed in Internet Explorer’s  file dialog.   But the file was not on the Desktop.  We tried closing Internet Explorer and restarting, but Internet Explorer still showed the phantom file. 

It turns out this is an artifact of Internet Explorer’s sandbox implementation on Vista or Windows 7.  Under certain conditions Internet Explorer writes to a virtualized Desktop folder located on the file system at: C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Virtualized\C\Users\xxx\Desktop.  If you have need to move or remove the files in the “Virtualized” directory, the easiest solution is to open the file browser dialog in Internet Explorer and then move or delete the files from inside that dialog. [more]

More information is available in a article by Mark Russinovich: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2009/02/03/3174194.aspx

Networking, Windows Vista, IE8, Windows 7, IE,
 

Array Configuration Utility:  If you install the ACU (v8.28), it will  not work with IE8. You must install v8.30.  The error report states that there is already an instance of the ACU running, and will not let you run a second copy. 

The new version of ACU is completely different from the earlier version. Here is a list of changes: [more]

  • Diagnostics (ADU - Array Diagnostic Utility) is now integrated with ACU (Array Configuration Utility)
  • GUI interface and icon updates
  • Tabs control for major task categories...Configuration, Diagnostics, and Wizards
  • Controller/Device Dropdown control for selecting controllers and devices
  • System Status section displays the overall issue status count
  • Transactions from tasks are committed to the controller as soon as the Save or Next button is clicked
  • This behavior is new for ACU but similar to how HPACUCLI has always performed
  • Systems and Devices Tree supports right mouse click for faster access to available tasks
  • Systems and Devices Tree section can be extended by dragging the mouse to show more text information
  • Available Tasks section supports a Mini-FAQ description to guide users for task selection
  •  ACU now supports context sensitive Help when in a task
  • Supports collapsible header sections to simplify viewing of information
  • Keyboard controls for accessibility
  • Keyboard shortcuts for common tasks
  • Scripting for captures and inputs is no longer supported in ACU
  • HPACUCLI is now responsible for Scripting
  • New SSP (Selective Storage Presentation) interface accessible from the Access Control (SSP) Tab if applicable
Networking, ACU, IE8,