posted 2007/04/05 at 16:21
Although I've been by and large happy with Yggdrasil Mark I (my self-built computer), ever since I've had it I've had problems with some Websites loading properly. It seems like whenever a Website wants to load a transitory page between when I submit a form and the final page, my browser refuses to load the transitory page, and I get a connection reset error. This is happening in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, so the best I can figure is that there's something going on with my Internet security software that's preventing the pages in question from loading properly. Even when I turn that software off, though -- a risk I really don't like taking -- the pages still won't load properly.
This has been a problem for me for some time here, but I didn't pay too much attention to it for two reasons: one, the Websites this was happening on were of fairly low importance to me; and two, I could always go to campus and use one of the computers there if I felt like I really needed to use the Website in question. Unfortunately this problem has come up again, and instead of being on a Website of relatively low importance, it's happening on a Website I need to use in order to apply for a job I found. Now that this is happening on an important Website, of course, I can't just drive over to campus and use a computer there to work my way around this problem.
Being the old techie that I am, of course, I've been trying to diagnose the problem myself, working through every possible avenue I can think of in order to get the job application Website to work properly. Flummoxed with the lack of success so far, I decided to go ahead and click on the "Diagnose Internet connection problems" link on the error page Internet Explorer gives you when a connection has been reset. Nothing happens when I click on that link, though, except that I get a nice like alert in the lower-left corner of my browser letting me know that a scripting error has been detected.
Let me repeat that in boldface and capital letters just to help drive the point home: THERE IS A SCRIPTING ERROR IN A MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER ERROR PAGE.
Either this is a sign that there is something seriously wrong with my computer (and the gremlin in question is only manifesting itself under the oddest of circumstances), or, more likely, Microsoft royally screwed things up here. Times like these make me long for the days when I had time to learn more about computers, because then I might have a better idea of what I'm doing. As it is, now I'm going to have to hope I can find a computer I can use to make that job application. (Before anyone asks, all the computers at the public libraries around here are invariably taken by ten-year-olds playing online billiards.)
If both IE and Firefox have the same issue, I'm guessing Opera would have the same issue. sounds like a gremlin got rid of a deeper bit of code. Reinstall the OS, or reinstall Firefox. Probably won't fix the issue with just the browser reinstall.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon