Security issues with IE 6

[DesperatelySeeking]

Hey All,

This appears to be affecting all the users to a greater or lesser extent. when a user tries to browse to our intranet (hosted internally on the same domain and network as all the user PCs) one of three things happens:
1) the following pop-up pops up:
The current Web page is trying to open a site on your intranet. Do you want to allow this?
Current Site: <address of intranet>
Intranet Site: <address of intranet>
(no that's not a typo, both the current AND the intranet sites have exactly the same address).
2) The page fails to open but shows "Done eith errors" in the bottom left hand corner
3) The page fails to open but simply shows "Done" (this time with no errors) in the bottom left hand corner.

In all cases pressing F5 or reloading IE itself corrects the problem temporarily.

There's nothing at all on the web about this.

Any ideas gratefully digested!

TIA
DS

 

[electronicsfreak]

If its affecting all computers sounds like possible virus or an error in network configuration. Thats my guess, although im not really sure and I could be wrong. Ill just post a few things to do on one machine or the main one and see if it helps.

Run chkdsk, defrag. Also put system disc in and run sfc/scannow. I have a link below to make a newer sp disc in case your disc does not have the current sevice pack you have on your system.

http://www.petri.co.il/windows_2000_xp_sp_slipstreaming.htm

Also wouldnt hurt to run this online system scan below. Do a full system scan.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

 

[DesperatelySeeking]

Thanks for the reply ef.

Aside from the fact that I have scanned for spyware and viruses on an affected PC with no change in the symptoms (and nothing found anyway) I was fairly certain that this wasn't going to be the problem. Our PCs are stuck behind hefty PIX firewalls and we have uptodate versions of McAfee's installed on every box (they autoupdate - reliably so far - every day).

I may have been a bit misleading on my orignal post. Where I said all PCs are affected to some extent I should have added that some have been "fixed" with workarounds while other, more stubborn, boxes refuse to take workaround for an answer.

We have tried the following:
Some PCs that were identifying our intranet as being in the "mixed" security zone were fixed by adding the FQDN of our intranet site to the specific intranet security zone.

All PCs that were asking for passwords have been sorted by going to custom security settings and changing the User authentication/Logon option to "Automatic logon with username and password" - I know that's dodgy, but it works until the permanent fix is found.

The PCs that haven't been fixed have had the above fixes applied with no change. We've even opened a call with MS who took one of our web guys thru some registry settings on the web server removing certain security settings put in by upgrading to SP1 (Server 2003).

At the moment the feeling here is that the problem is related to a third party app on the intranet making calls outside the intranet and causing the browser to think that the page is no longer in the intranet security zone - but we're having a hard time proving it!

Anymore help/suggestions gratefully received.

DS

 

[DesperatelySeeking]

In case anyone's interested we have narrowed this down to a problem with a combination of MSXML5.0 and any one of a number of IE6 security updates! With a "vanilla" sp2 installation the problem does not occur. We haven't yet gone through and installed security updates one by one (that would take a very long time as it takes twenty minutes for the fault to show itself. We've got MS on the case though so hopefully some kind of solution will present itself...

DS