Password Protected Area popup not appearing

[Distraction]

I have a website with some secure content on it.

Users with passwords click on a link, and the 'Connect to blahblahblah' dialogue box appears, asking for User ID and Password.

If a valid Userid/Pwd combo is entered, it goes to the site correctly.

If one hits Cancel, or enteres an invalid combo, there's a default 'Authentication Error' screen that appears.

I have a user complaining about the fact that when they click on the link, it goes directly to the Auth Err page, without the popup appearing.

We have diabled firewalls, popup blockers, he's running IE 6 whatever (recent version)...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[smah]

Try clearing out the user's Temporary Internet Files, make sure that the TIF Settings are set to check for new pages Automatically, and that proxy settings are configured properly (which might mean not set at all including not automatically detected).

 

[Distraction]

Strangely enough, this is the only person out of thousands to report this problem.

I thought it might be some kind of caching problem, like he entered a wrong password and it stored it, so I had him delete cookies, history, etc and try again.

I even went so far as to create a new protected directory with a plain html doc in it for him to try to see if the popup would appear this time (fresh start in case he had stored the other page somehow), and it still took him directly to the Auth Err page.

 

[smah]

If it's not any of the things that I posted above and everything else about this user's IE installation works properly, start looking for IE addons & browser extensions that might be affecting the behavior - Internet Options, Programs tab, Manage Add-Ons & Internet Options, Advanced tab, deselect Enable third-party browswer extensions. You could also try re-registering IE's dll's using IEFix (I don't expect it to work, but it's worth a shot).