Abnormal IE6 homepage when logged on with Limited rights

[CondorMan]

Hi everyone

I have XP Pro SP2, along with IE6. I have

http://uk.msn.com/

as my usual homepage (when logged on with Limited rights) but I noticed that the format changed a few days ago. I hadn't installed anything, done any registry tweaks etc. The address bar still reads

http://uk.msn.com/

but the page doesn't have any images and there's a scroll bar so it extends vertically over about 5 screens. If I log on with Admin rights, the

http://uk.msn.com/

homepage looks entirely normal (just one screen)! Similarly, if I use a different PC (same OS) and log on with Limited rights to see

http://uk.msn.com/,

everything's fine.

I suspected malware so ran up to date Spybot, a full AV scan (McAfee) and Windows Defender. All came back clean. I also ran HiJackThis when logged on with Admin and again with Limited rights. I could post these but, as you know, they are very long. I've also taken some screenshots of the abnormal homepage so could paste links to those if necessary.

I did System Restore back about 6 days (well before the problem started) and it made no difference.

I ran sfc /scannow (it found no errors) and reinstalled c:\windows\inf\ie.inf but neither resolved the problem (after rebooting).

I disabled all the Add-ons that I have loaded and that didn't make any difference.

I'm lost now - what next? It's almost as if the encoding of the page (View>Encoding) is wrong. It's set to Auto-Select (checked) and there's a dot next to Unicode (UTF-8) and also next to Left-To-Right Document.

Apart from this, IE6 works perfectly.

Finally, I looked at the code behind the homepage when logged on with Limited and Admin rights. It doesn't mean anything but I could post it if it might help someone to help me. I don't have access to an alternative browser.

Thanks for your time and patience.

 

[CondorMan]

I managed to sort it!

I cleared out all temp folders, TIFs, cookies, content.ie5, history.ie5 and prefetch. Everything's fine after a reboot so obviously so some of the "rubbish" that had accumulated caused the off MSN UK homepage.

It was obvious that the problem related only to my Limited account. If I hadn't managed to get it working correctly, I was considering "taking ownership" (or whatever the correct term is) of the Limited account (and transferring to a new Limited user account), just in case there was some corruption. Thank goodness that's not needed now.

I hope my experience allows someone else to resolve a similar situation should they encounter it.