Can’t set message flags in OWA using IE8

Busy busy weekend to go before the busy week I’m expecting!

This morning I got a call from a remote user to say they couldn’t set message flags when using Outlook Web Access (Exchange 2003)

I logged into an account on the same server and had no problems setting the flag

Then I discovered they were using IE8 so fired up my laptop (I’m still using IE7 on the desktop at work because I keep bumping into compatibility issues) and sure enough I had the same problem and noticed IE was reporting a script error

Luckily I didn’t have to look too hard

Error message when you click the flag icon of a message in the message list view in Outlook Web Access 2003 when you are using Internet Explorer 8: "’firstchild.firstchild’ is null or not an object"

I’ve applied the hotfix in the article and the problem has been solved!

JavaScript not running in Internet Explorer

Got a phone call this morning from someone who was having problems logging into one of their supplier parts catalogues.

They would enter their logon and details and would just get a blank page

I added the site to the trusted zone and compared the IE settings with a PC that could logon ok (also proving it wasn’t the firewall blocking content or the website itself)

Convinced it was IE to blame i downloaded Firefox Portable and the page displayed correctly

After that we tried upgrading to IE8 (thinking maybe IE was damaged) but still no luck

I then back to the beginning and did a “view source” on the blank page

There was a small piece of JavaScript that basically redirected to the main parts catalogue after login

Just to confirm this I opened my blog – there is some elements on this page that make use of javascript (bottom left hand corner – the “start” menu) and they didn’t work either

I was going to re-install the scripting engine(available here) but I also found

Register Windows Script Engine Fix it Live! – Microsoft Fix It Blog

The “fix it” automatically checks and re-registers the script components

Since i knew it was specifically javascript with the problem i did it manually

regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\jscript.dll

After I restarted IE the parts catalogue opened as expected as did the flashy bits on my blog

I’m officially a two browser person

Since Google Chrome is actually out of Beta I’ve installed it on my PC at home and my laptop (and i plan to install it at the office too). I have mentioned before about why i thought i might run two browsers, compatibility with some Microsoft products, Application shortcuts and the speed increases are just a couple of reasons

Another reason is this though

Internet Explorer 7

Google Chrome

Note: the screenshot from Chrome looks wider as it render the page across the whole screen. In IE it the page was centered with white space down both sides – i cropped out the white space

Now i know this may not actually be the browsers fault. It could be the way the web site designer has put the page together but the average browsing public wont really care about that

Just for fun i fired up my Windows 7 virtual machine and opened it in IE8 (i don’t like to use Beta software on my main system where i can help it!)

Internet Explorer 8 Beta

Internet Explorer 8 Beta (running in compatibility mode)

This isn’t a me taking a shot at Google Chrome. I’m sure if i look hard enough I’ll find pages that render just great in Chrome and look awful in IE

That it’s worth I’m really enjoying using Chrome and since i spend a lot of time in Google Reader and Gmail it makes sense for me to take advantage of Google’s own browser

All areas of IT seem to have their own religious wars and the browser wars are one of the fiercest. Just remember with any software you have the choice to use which ever fits your needs and for me that means using multiple browsers. Not blindly swearing that my first choice of browser is the best there is, everyone should be using and all other browsers suck!

SBS 2003 – Remote Web Workplace stuck at "loading”

This whole problem still puzzles me but I thought I’d recount it here in case it’s of use to anyone

We got a call from someone who was doing some work at home and wanted to use Remote Web Workplace but was having problems accessing her computer

I went though all the usual checks to make sure the Active-X control was enabled, she’d added the page to her trusted sites, etc but still no joy

The description she gave me was along the lines of this,

“When I put my user name and password in the main part of the goes page white, then when I click on the main menu option it lets me in. Then when I try to control my computer and I click the connect button it just sits there doing nothing”

Very odd

So we got some remote control software loaded on her PC and I logged in to take a look

I logged in and as she said after I’d logged in nothing was displayed. What I did notice though was the status bar at the bottom of IE

“Waiting for http://customersdomain.com/remote/winxp.gif”

IE was trying to download something so i pressed the ESCAPE key to cancel the download and sure enough the menu appeared

I then tried to remote control a PC and the same thing happened. I pressed escape and the Remote Desktop session appeared and I was able to login ok

So I had a workaround to get her onto her computer but I needed to figure out what was going on here

I had a look at the security software on her PC (McAfee) and I couldn’t see anything that would cause any issues. I temporarily disabled the software just so I could try it but still no joy

I tried logging in from various different PC’s at various different locations and they were all fine

So I turned my attentions to the server.

The browser was obviously waiting for something so I grabbed the IIS logs and trawled through them

I made a beeline for the WINXP.GIF file I’d seen earlier

Code 200 indicates a success so nothing strange going on here so I filter out all the 200 codes (and eventually the 300 codes as they are just redirects) and the only codes in the 400 range (client errors!) I got were

This file was directly after winxp.gif

Favicon is used so website can have custom icon when you bookmark their page

Some Favicon examples

I know remote web workplace doesn’t have a favicon so I moved onto the error code

403.6 forbidden: IP address of the client has been rejected

So I went to some our own SBS and checked the IIS logs to see what response we usually get to favico.ico

Everyone who has every used the Internet will have see error 404 before

404 : File or Directory Not Found (funny 404’s here)

I checked on some other servers and they all report 404 for the favico (since there isn’t one) as does the server with the problem. It just seems to be this specific person

So I went back to the PC and checked her favourites. Sure enough she had saved the link for remote web workplace so she didn’t have to type it in every time

I deleted the bookmark, restarted the browser and tried again and I got in first time without any problems

I’m still not entirely sure WHY this happened as plenty of people have that bookmark. I can only speculate that she has software on her PC that is doing something with her favourites

I just wanted to make sure she could get onto the system ok. I haven’t heard of any problems since

What’s even more weird was that I re-added the bookmark after I’d logged in ok and the problem didn’t reappear

Strange, strange, strange

If you have any opinions on why this happened or what caused it please let me know!

Internet Explorer 8 Beta now available

From here…

New features of note

Activities: Select an address on a page is and you could click on a “get directions to here” menu option (look up type action) or you could “send” data elsewhere (blog this, show on my facebook, etv) – some pre-created activites are available here

WebSlices: Not sure how to describe this…RSS allows you subscribe to site updates as a whole. My understanding of webslices is that you subscribe to “slices of the web page” for updates. If you wanted to track a friends facebook status, an ebay item, etc. You would subscribe to it as a webslice and get a more detailed connection over just an RSS subscription as a lot of this is setup by the web designer (someone please correct me if i’ve got this wrong!) More info here

 E-bay have great examples of these two features

Domain Highlighting: A new security feature. Many malicious sites have stupidly complex urls that make it difficult to figure out what the actual domain is. This features makes the top level domain stand out from the rest of the address

I’ll install this later on in the week as i only put beta stuff on “non-production machines” (my home computer!) and report back with my experiences

I’m glad that IE8 is on the way. I’ve been pretty happy with IE7 but the gap between IE6 and IE7 was too long. Firefox helped on that front and it’s only good for us!

UPDATE: About two seconds after i pressed the publish button and these links appeared on the Microsoft Download site

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows XP

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 64-bit Edition or Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition

Report a Webpage Problem Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta Add-On

Error when clicking an email link

Got a call from a client today

He was making some changes to the contact details on his website and when clicked on one of the email addresses in the page he got the following error message

“Could not perform this operation because the default mail client is not properly installed”

Bit odd. He is using Outlook 2003 and that appeared to working ok

A quick google search came up a with knowledge base article that says if your using Outlook Express as your mail client and you click a mailto link that contains more than 456 characters you will get this error.

Neither of these things were true though

I had another look around a notice that when he clicked on his start menu the usual Outlook 2003 orange icon was missing and had been replaced with an email envelope icon. When i clicked it the “Internet Properties” dialog box was displayed

I checked Outlook was set as the default program in Internet Explorer and via the options in Outlook. I also checked in “set program access and defaults” and Outlook Express wasn’t selected

I switched the defaults between Outlook and Outlook Express (and back again) and the error message went away. However, the new email was created in Outlook express and i couldn’t get it to do it Outlook

I decided the best thing to do was a “Detect and repair” in Outlook

This sorted out the icon problem but i still couldn’t get Outlook to open the mailto link

So,off to the registry!

Located the following

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command

It was pointing at outlook express!

I changed it to this: (which i double checked against my laptop)

“%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office11\outlook.exe” -c IPM.Note /m “%1%”

Notice the quote locations…they are important!

Restarted Outlook and all was well

For you control crazy admins

Just spotted on the Microsoft download site

Administrative Templates for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows

and

 Internet Explorer Administration Kit 7 RTM

Go get it!

Why bother with support…do it yourself!

Maybe the title is a bit harsh…but that’s pretty much how it happened!

*Note* So you don’t have to read all of this if your a Virgin Media Customer using Windows Vista and can’t download music from the SonicSelect (OD2Music) server add the following to “trusted sites”. If your interesting in why then please read on

****** http://*.od2.com  and  http://*.virginmedia.com ********

As part of my new shiny broadband package i get three free music downloads a month (£2.55 value!) from SonicSelect (OD2Music)

Know if you have read my blog for any length of time you’ll know i’m not a great fan of “DRM’d” music 

But i do love a bargain and it’s free music so thought i’d give it a go. So followed the instructions for signing up and installed their software and found a couple of tracks i was interested in. Click the download button, it got to about 60% and boom…

“Error 3(4)”

not very helpful! So tried a couple of other tracks and exactly the same. Gets to about 60% and just dies. So i tried the support section of the site and then promptly wished i hadn’t as it was a waste of time
If i had been paying for these tracks that would been it, custom going elsewhere, but since its free and i get it every month i sent them an email with as much info as i could (OS, browser, AV, firewall, etc)

The first response i got back was this

This error suggests a problem with the track save location specified in Windows Media Player.Please try the following:
1. Create a new folder on your PC in the root of your C:\ drive called “My Music”
2. Open Windows Media Player
3. Select “Tools”
4. Select “Options”
5. Select “Rip Music” (or “Copy Music” if you have an earlier version of Windows Media Player)
6. Click “Change..” and navigate to the newly created folder C:\My Music
7. Click “OK”.

I was a little dubious but tried it anyway with no luck. After that the replies i got were along the lines of “have you uninstalled and reinstalled”, “have you checked your firewall settings”, “have you checked your anti-virus”

Anyway, the first email got me thinking. He mentioned that the error message relates to a problem with the save location so decided to follow that avenue and that was when it hit me

I’m using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista…….

PROTECTED MODE

When using protected mode the website you visit is essentially in a “sandbox” and has very limited access to the system, including my Music folder!

I added the site to my “trusted sites” page. It still didn’t work but something was different. Every time i visited the page i insisted i wasn’t logged in

To access the site you have to login via the Virgin Media Member Center. I figured they must share a cookie or something so added that trusted sites and it all started working!

I emailed support back with the information but i’m yet to hear anything back

Improve Internet Explorer 7

Just a quick post for to showcase an Internet Explorer add-in i’ve been using for a couple of months now

I don’t usually go for browser add-ins (IE uses more than enough memory thanks) but the features seemed to good to be true

Tab Management, Built-in add blocking, Mouse Gestures, Save a page to an image file, View page information, Quick Proxy Switcher, Crash Recovery, Greasemonkey style scripts (New for this release)

Just some of the features at a glance

So step forward IE7pro

The greasemokey style script support is brand new for the current version (which i installed today) and the website claims that lots of existing greasemonkey scripts should work so i’m looking forward to seeing what it can do.

Go check it out!

P.S Give mouse gestures a try…..

Internet Explorer Crashes When You Send Email in OWA 2003

This has probably been blogged elsewhere but came across this today so thought i’d post

Customer tried to send email using OWA 2003 (with IE7). When she tried to compose a new e-mail she just got a red cross where the email body should be. I duly installed the SMIME control and all was well (though i ended the phone call with something in my head telling me they was something else i needed to do)

She called back a few minutes later. When she clicked the send button IE crashed

Found this in the event log 

Faulting application iexplore.exe, …..(blah blah)…….faulting module unknown

Quick look around some newsgroups and i remembered the other thing i needed to do

Fix the Exchange

I installed the hotfix from the following article

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=924334

There were are some other hotfixes for similar issues but this is the one i used

Installed and all worked fine.

She got prompted to upgrade the SMIME control (which she did) and she successfully sent me a test email