IE asks to open ActiveX control !?

[J741]

I have an associate using Windows 98 with IE 6.0

When she visits a specific web page which contains a link to an Adobe Acrobat file, a pop-up message is displayed instead of the acrobat file. The message box is titled "File Download" and contains the following lines of text:

File Name: ...5-82CE-48B2-9483-32C8CEE066D4
File Type: Adobe Acrobat Control for ActiveX
From:

http://www.thewebsitename.com

This type of file could harm your computer if it contains malicious code.
Would you like to open the file or save it to your computer?
-open- -save- -cancel- -more info-

If she clicks on either open or save, a new IE windows is displayed indicating that it can not open the file ...5-82CE-48B2-9483-32C8CEE066D4 or that the website does not exist.

This all works without a problem from another computer, and was working on this computer before Monday.

It looks to me as if IE is not processing the ActiveX controls correctly, but I don't know what to do about it (short of erasing and re-installing Windows).

If anyone can help me out with this I'll be very thankful.

 

[battmain]

Check the Internet Explorer security settings and see if the activex controls are enabled. If that fails, you should be able to reinstall Adobe and fix the problem.

 

[carrr]

Right on. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security tab > highligh "Internet" > click "Custom Level" > the first five entries here pertain to ActiveX, you've likely got one or more set for "Prompt" as this is the default for Medium security and up, I believe. Set them to "Enable" or the user will just have to deal with future repeats.


"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds." - Malaclypse the Younger

 

[J741]

O.K. Changed all ActiveX security settings under "interntet" to enabled. Problem not resolved. I observed that when the link to the PDF is clicked, a second IE window opens, with "unknown zone" in the lower right-corner, instead of "internet zone", so I temporarily changed the ActiveX security settings for all zones to "enabled", but this still did not resolve the problem. I even added the website containing the PDF link to the "trusted sites" zone, but the PDF link from the website still comes up as "unknown zone".

I'm really confused by this.

 

[battmain]

The messages that you are getting almost sound as if you have a firewall or something else on the pc. Running Zone alarm, Norton or something like that? Just thought about something...What about the user rights? Does it work ok if you sign in with a power user or administrator?

 

[DStoli]

I have someone here with the exact same problem with a slightly different system setup. Maybe we can find a common trend here:

Windows 2000 Pro
Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5 (full, not Reader)
IE 6

It only happens within a specific web app we're using. All other PDF files open corrrectly, and the file will open on another machine just fine.

Any progress fixing it yet?

 

[battmain]

Same question on user rights. I've seen similar behavior in Win2k when the admin installs something, but the actual logged on user doesn't have the proper rights to some registry settings. Was the program installed under this user? If not, try reinstalling it under this user and see what happens. Give 'em temporary admin rights if you have to.

 

[J741]

I have found a Microsoft knowledge base article 330389 which indicates that this issue will occur if the client computer has installed specific Internet Explorer security updates, and is also connecting to a secure web server using the HTTPS protocol, if the web server's security certificate server has not been updated with a corresponding security patch.

This seems to describe my situation exactly, so I contacted the administrator of the secure website, and was informed that all current updates have been applied to the secure web server. However the issue still exists for my associate, and has suddenly occured for two other associates also.

I am convinced that this issue has something to do with the way Internet Explorer is handling access to secure websites, but I am not convinced that the knowledge base article I found contains the correct answer.

If anyone else has any further insight into this, please let me know.

- James.

 

[J741]

Well, now this issue is happening on my own computer.

When I visit my bank's secure online investing website, and click on an information document which is a .PDF file, Internet Explorer asks if I want to save the Adobe Acrobat ActiveX Control instead of simply opening the file.

This issue seems to be getting worse, and I have a hard time believing that I'm the only one to experience this. Someone out there must know why this is happening, no?

 

[battmain]

How are the machines being loaded? You using images? Now that the mention of secure websites came up, I had a user that had a similar problem with secure sites, but it was connecting to them. The encrytion and everything looked fine. We ended up reloading with the machines from cds instead of an image and it worked. That was after we had reloaded it with an image.

Have you also tried reregistering the IE dlls?

 

[bcastner]

1. Log in under an account that can view .pdf files without isssue.

At a command prompt, enter:
assoc .pdf

You should get .pdf=AcroExch.Document or similar string. Write the string down carefully.

Then enter the following, with the result of the
previous command (e.g., AcroExch.Document):

ftype AcroExch.Document

It should return something like: AcroExch.Document="C:\PROGRA~1\Adobe\ACROBA~1.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" "%1"

Write down exactly the value returned.

2. Logon as the "problem" user.

Start, Run, CMD

assoc .pdf=Whatever you recorded above
ftype AcroExch.Document=Whatever you recorded above

Remember "AcroExch.Document" may read differently for you. Use the string returned by the assoc command above.

 

[bcastner]

But see Claudio Rogriguez's comments.

It is a WebSite issue, is the general response. And this has some truth to it. As the reference, caching and pre-HTML headers can avoid the issue.

But I vote with Claudio: it is a problem with the ActiveX control:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...tivex+control+problem&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en

Note: I still defend what I note above: this will help in 90% of the cases, asssuming the WebServer has caching off.

 

[J741]

Thank you everyone for your assistance, but we were all wrong.

I found the solution !!

Another associate of mine suggested that I go into the 'Internet Options' - 'Advanced' settings for Internet Explorer and click 'restore defaults', and voila! it worked.

So I painstakingly changed every setting one at a time until I found the culprit....

Under 'security', if you enable the option 'do not save encrypted pages to disk', then this problem occurs, and you can not access Adobe Acrobat .PDF files from a secure website. If this option is disabled, the Adobe Acrobat .PDF files open from a secure website without a problem.

What a pain in the ass that was to track down!

- James.