IE 6.0 behaves strangely

Hello everyone.

We have two strange things happening when using Internet Explorer, and wonder if there's a cure or fix available:

1. Often, but not always, when a new page loads in the browser the blue header at the top of the page turns gray as soon as the page is done loading, and we can't scroll down the page until after we left-click the mouse. Obviously, left-clicking selects the page as the primary window. I'm not sure if this only happens when a single browser page is opened or if it happens when there are several pages.

Can anyone explain this quirk or how to prevent it?

2. When we first open a page in the browser we nearly always get the little error message box stating: "There's no internet connection available" and offers buttons labeled "Work offline" and "Try again ". If we click on "Try again" we immediately and always get the webpage we asked for in the first place.

Why does this happen?

We have a wireless broadband connection and we're using Internet Explorer 6.0. Presumably, it is up to date because Windows Update offers no updates for IE. Also, Automatic Updates is enabled, too.

Our system:

Dell Dimension 4550
Intel P4 2.53GHz / 533MHz fsb
2x512MB PC2700 RAM
etc.
Windows Firewall enabled
AVG free edition anti-virus (updated daily)
Google Toolbar with pop-up blocker

Both problems listed above existed before we installed the Google Toolbar.

 

Hi Gaucherre,

Answer to Q1:
Change your desktop appearance or theme to a standard one.
Do NOT customize any part of it.
Just choose one and leave all settings and colors at default.

Answer to Q2:
1. Close any and all Internet Explorer windows.
2. Go to Control Panel > Internet Options > Connections tab > LAN Settings
3. UNcheck 'Automatically detect settings'.
4. Click OK > Apply > OK
5. Restart your PC

HTH,
ski123

 

I changed the desktop to a plain blue background - no pictures, no patterns, and no screensaver or desktop theme. From what I can tell now, the only website that loads and is immediately grayed out/not the primary selected page is at Hotmail.com email website. Strange, eh? I've no idea how to overcome this annoyance.Next, I followed your instructions LAN Settings/Automatically detect settings, but it was already unchecked! Any other suggestions for avoiding this Work Offline error message thing?

 

Re: Question 2. I had this same message for about 6 months and then my internet connection failed altogether. Turned out to be a bad card in the phone co's central office. They changed the card and no more messages. I would call your ISP but when I called mine they denied they had any trouble. It was only after failure of the internet connection did they find the trouble. BTW I am using DSL from Verizon.

 

A few years back we had DSL from Qwest. We experienced slowdowns, hangs, and disconnects for weeks on end. It happened right from the beginning of our service with them. Dozens of calls to tech support produced the same old tired excuses and useless suggestions. Finally, I threw a really nasty tantrum on the phone and insisted on a 3-way conference call with Qwest engineers at the switching office. They were "stunned" when their Ping test returned zero data packets - hah! Grudgingly, they agreed to check their equipment and, you guessed it, they replaced a bad board and everything worked OK. They always treat you like it's your fault, never theirs. If I hadn't got really, REALLY nasty to them nothing would ever have been done. More unpleasant conversations followed in trying to get a credit for the loss of service, lousy service, etc. After all that, they compounded their dire reputation by double-billing us for long-distance for 5 months. A**holes!! Now we each have a cell phone and cable internet, so no more dealing with Qwest. Thank goodness for small favors.