Can't Download
 

All of a sudden, I have found that I can't download, not even from this site.

When I click on a download link, a window flashes just long enough to see the flash, and then nothing. Usually there's a dialog box asking whether I want to open or save the file so that's probably what the flash is.

At the same time this happened, my right-click button stopped working.

Everything was working this afternoon. I successfully downloaded from several sites because I had to get all the bits to install a new sim.

I have restarted IE several times and even uninstalled the (vehemently unwanted and unwelcome) Google Toolbar that came in as a Trojan with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Anybody got a clue what I might have done? At the time it happened, the only sites I had open were Sun Sims and Insim. I was on Insim when I first experienced the phenomenon.

I'm running Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista.

I got that problem too! Was starting to wonder if it was a virus or something. Hope that's not it!

Anyhow... it happens most when I've got several tabs open in IE. Symptoms vary:

1) Context menus (the right click thingie) won't open.
2) Things that are minimized to the SysTray (by the clock) won't unminimize.
3) New applications won't open from the Start menu.
4) Either the Open/Save (choice) dialog won't appear when I click a link or the Save dialog (where you actually pick the filename) won't appear after I click the Save button.
5) If you try to open a link "in new tab," the new tab gets the word "Connecting" and it never connects. If this happens, all four of the preceding symptoms will happen until you close the "Connecting" tabs.
6) Applications such as PhotoShop will err on opening because it can't open all the palette windows and such.
7) MS Paint will give you an error, such as "cannot create new document", and close when you try to open it.

Closing other application windows and/or IE tabs seems to improve things.

I'm running IE7 on Windows XP.

I installed Skype (online telephone proggie) a couple days ago and it started the next day. Prolly a coinkydink tho. I noticed it first on InSimAdult. Rebooting doesn't help much.

Did your problems clear up???

IE7 has been doing some strange things on me the last few days - like opening up new tabs on it's own to sites that are no where near the ones in my site selection that I have open. I had a flash like a pop up window opening for a second on either saturday or sunday while I was on ISA and it's been going on all week. I rarely use multiple tabs either but thinking about it I may have. BTW, the site it keeps opening is Peggysims. Don't know why, I haven't been there in weeks. I think it's time to run a full scan if I can get Norton to cooperate.

BTW, I'm running XP too.

They're better, but still there...

My problem went away after I rebooted the machine. I still don't know what caused it. Maybe it was the Google toolbar.

I doubt it's the google taskbar at least on my machine. I've been running it forever and never had any problems like this. Although my internet has been acting up lately - dropping signals, trouble bringing up my home page, some sites take forever coming up, those kind of things. Virus scan turned up nothing. So it might have something to do with my ISP.

Maybe it's Time-Warner Cable...

Why are you using IE?

Try Firefox. Less buggy and looks prettier :))

I was underwhelmed by the Thunderbird email client, so I never bothered installing Firefox.

Don't have Time Warner here that I know of. Cox has pretty well locked up the Vegas cable market and I've got them.

IE has never given me problems so why change?

Because:

1. I'm used to it.
2. I'm a curmudgeon.

I think the problem might have been caused by having Symatec's update gizmo locked up somehow. It doesn't seem to want to play nice with Vista.

That could be. If I accidentally leave Azureas "downloading," my problems get worse, and communication and window creation come to a shrieking halt once I get a tab that stays on "Connecting" for more than a second. Actually, all application spawning comes to a shrieking halt -- I had every single Seti and Einstein packet get rejected as "Computation Errors" because the Boinc manager couldn't spawn the application to process them.

Um... could you translate that into English? :lol:

Thank you Greg! It's nice to know I wasn't the only one who went "Huh, Wadidshesay???"

I think we've been had!:laugh:

Well, I was trying to say that sometimes another application will monopolize my Internet connection, and that makes the symptoms worse. The most annoying one is opening something in a new tab and the word "Connecting" comes up on the tab and stays there. It should vanish in less than a second, if it's visible at all.

Yeah, that happens to me quite frequently, too. Another one is an application that opens a dialog box and then somehow gets stuck.

I suspect some bright kids at Microsoft are tying to find ways to program the operating system so that it maintains control over these things, but I wish they were already done doing it! :lol:

It's strange that I'm running XP and you're running Vista, and we both have the same symptoms and they started within three days of each other.

Sounds like the problem isn't with the OS but might be either IE7 or something interacting with it like your firewall, virus protection, etc.

I always have a wait before any site including my home page opens up. It seems to be worse when I open a 2nd tab. The phlishing filter just wants to run on every page I open is part of it but even when I turn it off, it still takes time. Though, it seems to back off after a while and then I get a norton update and it starts all over again.

I'm now wondering if it isn't norton resetting stuff after it updates.

It could be something like that. I have seen odd behavior from Norton; it removes my logins from some sites but not others. I have never understood why.

I'm suspecting IE7. I just had the operating system refuse to open Open Office while IE was running. Quit IE and Open Office open and IE opened back up, nice as you please!