Not a Login Problem

[sarahkelley]

Help,

Every time 'title' in any variation is in the name of the thread my Explorer window closes if I click on it. It doesn't matter where I'm at, because I've tried to get at the posts from different boards.
It's so frustrating.

Sarah

[Scotty]

HI Sarah,

there could be any number of reasons for this, some simple, some not so - I don't if this will be of any help, but it might give you somewhere to start.

What version of Windows are you running and what version if Internet Explorer do you use (or do you use a different browser?)

Have a look at the homepage.inf file in the Windows/system directory - it should contain entries that look like this...

[DefaultInstall]
ComponentName=IEHomePageInfo
ComponentVersion=6.0

[!StartHomePage]
HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main","First Home Page",,%FirstHomePage%

[StartHomePage.Remove]
HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main","First Home Page"

[Strings]
PROGRAMF="Program Files"
FirstHomePage="http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd={SUB_PRD}&ar=runonce&pver={SUB_PVER}&plcid={SUB_CLSID}"
Browser_suite="Internet Explorer"
SHORTCUT_UPDATE="Update Product"

If it's vastly different to that, it could be that the file has been corrupted somehow and you may need to reinstall some windows components from the CD to correct it - you could also do a manual change to some of the above settings but that comes with its own risks...

If you can't open the explorer windows, go to START, SETTINGS, CONTROL PANEL and double-click the internet options icon - take a look at what is set as the default setting for the explorer home page - it's possible that one of those annoying programs that downloads itself from certain webpages has changed the address and is doing something weird. If you can, download SPYBOT from the net (it's free) and run it - you might be surprised at how many little 'files' are sitting on your computer doing all sorts of stuff - the program is quite user friendly though again, exercise some caution as to which files you tell it to delete - it's a great program but it's not infallible.

If you're running a firewall program such as Zone Alarm, check the settings to see that the explorer you're using has ticks in all the boxes as a sender and receiver of information.

If you're running a stand-alone popup killer of any kind, again check the settings (usually an 'excluded files' list of some kind) and see whether any of the exclusions has the word 'title' in it - if so, deselect them (add them to the 'allow' list and see if that makes a difference.)

It might also be a javascript thing - if javascript is disabled, this can play havoc with some hyperlinks and stuff although I'm not entirely familiar with it - I know that I have javascript enabled but at the moment I can't remember where to check it

What else? Download Internet Explorer updates from the microsoft homepage as often as you can - these will update the explore engine and close any loopholes that hackers utilise to play havoc with it.

Change browsers - not everyone is happy with internet explorer and there is a good range of free browsers on the net that do the job just as well, if not better, than explorer can.

A couple of good ones are:

Opera
Mozilla
MyIE2 (this one is based on the IE6 engine but has a lot more useful add-ins and user-friendly features.)

Hope something in there is of some help.

Scotty

[sarahkelley]

Hey Scotty,

Thank you ever so much for your help. That was a pretty extensive message and I appreciate all the time that you put into it even if computing is one of your hobbies.
It's the browser. I tried Netscape (both are installed on this computer) and it works just fine.
So now I can read all the posts. Yippeee!

Thanks again,
Sarah

[Scotty]

no worries - glad the problem was easily resolved.

Scotty