Cannot View Cached Pages Offline

Hello again everyone,

Another minor issue regarding my wife's Toshiba laptop (WinXP Home SP2, IE6, fully patched and updated, and protected by Zone Alarm, Ewido, SpyBot, SpywareBlaster, CWShredder, and NAV 2005). Recently we fixed a problem with "qttasks" and the machine runs pretty well. Now we have a different problem, minor in nature, but still an annoyance. We cannot view previously cached web pages in the offline mode. The browsing history shows, but the links to SOME of the cached pages are grayed out. That is the confusing part...not all of the links are grayed out...SOME of them are viewable. And there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to which pages are viewable or not! Example...my wife pre-loaded a 28-page Kmart circular to be viewed offline later (yes, we have dialup...), and only about 12 of the pre-loaded 28 pages are able to be viewed! This is puzzling. I looked into the browser a bit to investigate...the slider is set to 125MB, more than enough space for temporary internet files to live. The history is set to the default 20-day setting. The "clear cache when browser is closed" box in the "Advanced" settings is unchecked, as it always has been. I ran SFC this morning, and it still didn't fix it. IE is the default browser, even though we use MSN 9 Dialup (which also uses IE and puts some pretty bells and whistles on it, and calls it "MSN Explorer "). That being said, neither browser will show these pages offline. And of course, MSN Tech Support is clueless.

Any and all suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks for all your help.
Brad

 

thestadiumguy--I understand some of the offline files work and some do not. That could be a difficult to fix.
However, maybe you have to resynchronize the downloaded files. IE Tools|Synchronize might do it. Or in Windows Explorer click Tools|Folder Options|Offline Files tab and see that all the settings look OK.
I personally have rotten luck with Offline Files Viewing.

 

Good evening Jim,

Thanks for responding. I know that some pages will work and some won't. But these particular pages have been known to work before. They even work in my desktop. And more pages that have been pre-loaded are disappearing, even though the slider is set to 125MB. I realize that this may be a minor issue, but it's an annoyance just the same. I'll try your synchronize suggestion and report back as soon as I can.

Thanks again.
Brad

 

Good morning, all.

Well, the synchronization didn't work. In fact, when my wife loaded some pages that have been known to work in the very recent past (and that work on my desktop right now), she still can't view them offline. We scan frequently for viruses and "stupidware ", and we appear to be clean. What would our next step be? A repair of IE, perhaps? I'm hoping that we don't have to do anything drastic, like format the drive and start from scratch. This has to be something simple, doesn't it?

I can't imagine why IE isn't holding these loaded pages in cache. I'm getting more and more confused.
Brad

 

thestadiumguy--Regret you still have the problem.

But is it enough for 28 pages of KMart?
Is it the last 16 pages that are not cached or just random pages?
I have understood that you can make other files available for offline viewing. If so, perhaps this is something specific to KMart.
For what it is worth, here are the official instructions for Offline Viewing
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/learnmore/offlineviewing.mspx

I have already hinted that I have my own problems with Offline Viewing. What I do, if the page will permit, is to File|Save As each page. I choose Web Archive (.mht) in the "Save as type" line. A lot of work with 28 pages, however.

 

Hi Jim,

Yes, it is random pages. And 125MB has always been enough space before. And now other sites that used to show offline cannot be viewed, yet I can cache and view them offline on my desktop. And my slider is set to 75MB. This problem is strictly with my wife's laptop. We both run MSN dialup, and I'm not having any problems. As far as I know, all of the IE settings on the laptop are set to default for SP2, and nothing else with the laptop has changed, except for the addition of Ewido about a week and a half ago.

With the MSN 9 Dialup software, there is no need to go through the synchronization process to view pages offline. At the welcome screen, you simply check the "work offline" box, sign in, pull up your history of viewed pages, and that's it. No synchronization is necessary. And when things are working right, I can view pages offline using either the MSN or the IE browsers. even though I never technically opened IE. As I mentioned earlier, MSN Explorer and Internet Explorer are one in the same, but the MSN browser puts a new face on top of IE. Now, if I manually bypass the MSN software and dial right into the ISP, and use IE as the main browser, I still have the same problem viewing offline pages. It is as if the pages are being reloaded from scratch because they are not being saved to the cache. And that is why I believe that this is an IE problem.

Oy. Computers.....
Brad

 

Offline pages can be viewed again!

Hi all,

I was able to restore the ability to view offline files on my wife's laptop by simply re-registering the dll files by using this link that Zander provided me a few weeks ago when I was having my own troubles with IE:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555027

So far, so good. Thanks again to those who provided help.
Brad