Since SP2, some ad frames in IE6 don't show up

[Steve Portigal]

I've got XP Home, upgraded to SP2, using IE6.

Some parts of some webpages won't display. Frames that contain dynamic
content, like ads that are served to that page, don't show up.
The page cannot be displayed - Cannot find server or DNS Error - the
standard IE error page shows up in that frame.

Pop-up blocker is off (but these aren't popups anyway).

I installed Sun's Java as I had thought maybe that was the problem -
that IE wasn't supporting Java much longer and I needed to go to Sun's
version. But that didn't make a difference.

I don't see anyone describing this exact situation, but I can't
imagine it's that uncommon. Thanks for any help!

Steve

 

[MowGreen [MVP]]

Steve,

Check in Internet Options to see if Sun Java is selected as the java
package to use. Click on the Advanced tab and scroll down to
Java[Sun] and make sure there's a check mark next to
" Use Java 2 1.4xx ..<for applet>.."
Click Apply, then OK. Restart the system.

MowGreen [MVP]
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============

 

[Steve Portigal]

Check in Internet Options to see if Sun Java is selected as the java

package to use. Click on the Advanced tab and scroll down to
Java[Sun] and make sure there's a check mark next to
" Use Java 2 1.4xx ..<for applet>.."
Click Apply, then OK. Restart the system.

Thanks. This was already the setting, however!

 

[MowGreen [MVP]]

The page cannot be displayed - Cannot find server or DNS Error

Not sure why, Steve. The above error *may* result from a HOSTS file
entry or the sites are in the Restricted zone. Check in Internet
Options to confirm. If you know the URL of the sites, add them to
the Trusted Sites zone . Just grasping at straws here ... do you
have Intermute's SpySubtract installed ?

Here's the rundown on most " Page can not be displayed " error
messages :
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/answers.htm#dns


MowGreen [MVP]
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============

Check in Internet Options to see if Sun Java is selected as the java
package to use. Click on the Advanced tab and scroll down to
Java[Sun] and make sure there's a check mark next to
" Use Java 2 1.4xx ..<for applet>.."
Click Apply, then OK. Restart the system.

Thanks. This was already the setting, however!

 

[Steve Portigal]

Not sure why, Steve. The above error *may* result from a HOSTS file

entry

I think you're onto something...here's part of the HOSTS file

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.preferances.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 ads.web.aol.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.preferences.com
127.0.0.1 ad.washingtonpost.com
127.0.0.1 adpick.switchboard.com
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 ads.infospace.com
127.0.0.1 ads.msn.com
127.0.0.1 ads.switchboard.com
127.0.0.1 ads.enliven.com
127.0.0.1 oz.valueclick.com
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad2.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad3.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad4.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad5.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad6.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad7.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad8.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad9.doubleclick.net

etc.

It's dated October 4, and it's read-only.
And I see from http://www.beemerworld.com/tips/xphosts.htm that
<quote>
Blocking ad banners isn't all to difficult either.

Right click on the ad banner you wish to not receive, and from the
context menu select, "Properties". This will show you the address of
the ad banner.

If the address is not the main web host address, (e.g.:
ads.geocities.com) then you can make an entry in your "hosts" file.
It will look like this:

127.0.0.1 ads.geocities.com

127.0.0.1 is your computers, Internal IP address. You have directed
your computer to access files requested from ads.geocities.com from
the IP address of 127.0.0.1 .Your computer does not have the graphics
that are supposed to be downloaded from this site so you get an empty
frame where the graphic is supposed to be loaded on the page. If a
cookie was to be sent with the graphic, it won't be and no denial of
page either. Things speed up a little as well since you are not
downloading anything from the site you don't need or want to download.

</quote>

I'm not sure at all how that got set up. I tried making the file
writeable, but that wasn't enough. I opened it up and stripped out all
but the first line, and then did an ipconfig /flushdns (not sure that
I needed to) and it was fixed. Now I can see ads (yeah, maybe that's
not so good, but I was getting tired of seeing errors as well - as
much cognitive distraction as ads).

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Steve Portigal]

Ah. Spybot Search and Destroy (I think) was the program that altered my HOSTS file.

Thanks again everyone.