Mac Forum / Applications / Internet Explorer / August 2004

A friend is having trouble with IE 5.1.7 on his Mac G4
with Mac OS 9.2.  When he starts IE, the browser is blank
(prior to attempting to load the designated home page)
and the status bar informs the user that it is "Getting
information for Internet Explorer" (or something to that
effect)....the progress bar halts and the swirling "E"
moves ad infinitum.  We never finish loading whatever IE
is setting up.

If you simply type a website into the address bar of that
initial window, you can go to any website but IE will
never fully load the site.  It will have one item left
and attempt to load that item until the window is
closed.  This prevents things like printing from taking
place (presumably because the sofware does not believe
the browser has been properly set up).

Curiously, if you simply close the initial browser window
upon loading (despite not finishing its setup) and open a
new browser window, the program works just fine.  You can
load websites completely and print at will.

I'm assuming this is a bug in the software and curious
whether anyone has encountered it too.  If so, is there a
fix (say by changing preferences)?  It's not a terrible
inconvenience but this friend is not particularly
technical and it trips him up frequently.

Any insight is appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt