Windows Vista Blank IE pages and permissions

After the 5th repair on my Sony Viao Best Buy had to replace my computer, so now I have Vista Premium which I don't particularly like.

When I click a link or even copy and paste a link, I get blank pages. Example, I need to change my email address at RoseCity Software however, IE will not let me get to that page, although I have entered it into the trusted zone, I still get a blank page when trying to update my email address for the newsletters and beta testing.

Also, when I try to download some things, a box pops up asks "Run" or "Save ", I click "Save" and the box diappears, I click "Run" and it downloads it but never gives the completed download box to "Run" it from.

And I know that some say that you should not save to desktop but that is where I always save to and then move it elsewhere when I am done with it, but Vista does not give you the option to download to the desktop!!!!

My new computer came with McAfee trial which I do not like, I really liked the AOL AntiVirus Shield (Kaspersky) which was free...makes it even better, but I can't find if it is Vista compatible however Kaspersky sites says that v. 6 is Vista compatible.

You have to jump through hoops in Vista to do anything, I suppose this is their "Security" lockdown, but geez I can't even save to my backup drive without having to go into each folder and set permissions.

I uninstalled all that gunk from my computer and think I may have uninstalled a program that could be causing the problem which was something called browser redirect or something like that (I know it started with browser), could that be my problem? And if so how do I get it back? I tried system restore but it didn't put it back but it put back all the other trial programs that I uninstalled, whatever it was I can't find it in event viewer.

Vista froze with screensaver on and had to hard boot it. Also trying to find a virtual cd driver but haven't found one that worked yet, I downloaded several and the only one that showed up was SlySoft's VCD but it wouldn't load any ISOs that I have on my backup drive, any suggestions? So I had to uninstall them.

Any reading recommendations for Vista? I personally don't think it's very user friendly, but I've only been working with it continously for the past 30 hours so a little more info and exploring I might change my mind. It surely isn't as easy as XP was.

What about a firewall? Is the vista firewall sufficient? Or should you still rely on 3rd party software?

Media Center does not work as well as it did on XP, it won't recongnize my remote nor can I manually program it, which in XP had no problem with that.

Gateway, 3gRAM, 500g HD, GeForce7650 graphics 250g slave drive.

 

Dunno if it will help your particular problems, but any advanced user (i.e. someone who knows how to avoid getting schpanked by malware) should turn off user account control. This can be done in the user accounts control panel. All it's for is to protect the average lame PC user who doesn't know what the hell he/she is doing, most people on these forums wouldn't need it turned on as they wouldn't get hit by malicious software in the first place.

I use the latest version of daemon tools, which seems to work fine on Vista Business.

I wouldn't personally use anything AOL have had anything to do with, however, I have heard that Kaspersky is a very good anti-virus system. I use Avast myself which has never let me down, nor hogged any of my system resources to death (like Symantec and McOffee do) AVG 7.5 is also a very good anti-virus product, it gets more bad press than it deserves in my opinion.

I've not experienced the problems with the browser like you have described. But then again I use FireFox not I.E. most of the time. You can however save to the desktop, there's a link on the left hand side of the download box that says "Browse Folders" which allows you to select where you want to download to.

 

Doesn't seem to be the browser that is the problem, I downloaded Mozilla and tried the link there and still got a blank page, maybe Rose City is having some difficulty with their site.

I agree, I wouldn't have anything to do with AOL but since the AntiVirus Shield was actually Kaspersky I have used it on my computers for a long time and am very pleased with it, according to the reviews it is highly ranked and is Kaspersky 6 which is the lastest version.

I don't know what my problem was with the VCD drive but since I had not put very much on my new computer I just decided to reformat, once that was done Virtual CD from Slysoft installed and works just fine. Must have been some glitch in my installtion from the factory, who knows.

I will try turning off the user control and see how that goes. No I'm no idiot when it comes to protecting myself, I haven't yet, but normally have around 6 spyware/malware/adware programs running at all times and of course my firewall and virus protection.

My computer came with McAfee trial which is new to me, but I feel that it bogs down my system. Have always used NIS until 2006 when their software was really invasive and 2007 even got worse, so no more NIS for me EVER.

I still am curious if the vista firewall is sufficent for both inbound and outbound permissions or should I use a 3rd party firewall. One thing I have noticed is that now I get ads in my browser which I didn't before. Going to have to find a solution for that. After I trashed Nortons I used Comodo firewall and AOL antivirus shield and never had any problems and would like to continue using them. I will turn user account control off after I have all my programs installed, thanks for that tip.

It's getting easier the more I work with it, but at 1st I was overwhelmed with all the security permissions......you can't do this or that stuff, I felt like I was being controled by some invisible government!!! LOL