Unable to download ANYTHING!

I am trying to help a friend with a bizarre computing problem.
Whenever he tries to download anything through IE he gets an almost blank webpage instead of the "file download" dialogue box. This goes for any download site and any file. We've updated IE to IE6 but he still has the same problem.
The "almost blank" page consists of a tiny icon in the top left which I know I should recognise but don't: it's a small white rectangle with a red square in it's top left corner, a green circle in the middle right and a blue triangle in the bottom left.
Using a download manager works for most things but other downloads are incompatible with these and he needs to download something.
Any ideas?

 

Nope- already ennabled

Thanks Steve but it's already ennabled. Any other ideas? I just know that this is going to be one of those bang-your-head-against-a-wall-for-an-hour-once-it's-solved kind of deals!

 

Had a similar problem with IE5 a long time ago it turned out to be a download manager program (sorry can't remember its name) which we had uninstalled from the computer having decided it was no good, but it had not removed itself from IE so whenever we tried to download anything in IE it just pulled up a blank page (or similar).

To correct the problem we had to re-install the Download Program and deselect the option for it to integrate itself into IE ie tell it not intercept all downloads and then removed the program and all worked well.

May not be the same but as you mentioned using a download manager it might be worth thinking about.

 

Only tried download manager as a fix

We installed the download manager (GetRight) as an attempted solution to the problem - there had never been one on the system before. To be honest, it was very much a work around rather than a fix - I figured if he can't download anything through windows at least he'll be able to download through something else. The problem is that it doesn't catch everything and so I really need to fix the problem and not work around it. Any clues? (Thanks for all the sugestions so far).

 

This may be worth a shot...

Go to run and type Regedit.

Go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Plugins\Extension

Delete the Extension key, close Regedit and reboot.

 

Thanks - sorted!

Thanks plansdown - the registry solution worked. I'd received it from another source too and we gave it a shot. So many hours of hunting for a solution and the fix took under a minute to apply! Thanks very much. This was my first experience with windowsbbs - in the words of Arnie, "I'll be back ".

 

Glad to help. Thanks for keeping us posted.