Love and Liberty

Hi Alex. Probably not you have probably picked up some malware, adware, spyware or something. Speaking from bitter experience, and starting with the least drastic action and ending with the most drastic:

1. Load and use Firefox or Opera

2. Run or load/run McAfee or some other AV software

3. Put your problem into Google - it is highly likely there will be someone else who has had the same problem and been given an answer on some forum somewhere.

4. As a general tip, I would buy a separate harddrive (if you haven't already got one) and keep all your files backed up on that. If you eventually can't cope on your computer, then you can easily "abandon ship" and get a new one. I recently had to do this because I had been beseiged with so much rubbishware. Now, for the first time, I have loaded a proper paid-for (by Sky for the first year) McAfee package which I now swear by for keeping things fast.


Hope one of those helps.

All the best
Paul
 

Zonealarm works for me as a security package!

Good luck....
 

Not just you - I get the same thing in IE7 with Simon and James's blogs, either from your link or by typing the URL. (Can't see the link for Unity, sorry - haven't had tea yet...) I find that I can read the pages by hitting Stop as soon as they visibly load, while one of the widgets is still being loaded - maybe they all have a widget in common that isn't working for some reason?
 

I have a suggestion! Download Firefox. Stop using the evil tools of satan. You use IE, and sooner or later you get what you deserve.
 

That's odd. I added some extra gubbins to the right-hand column of mine, which your machine might not like. Perhaps this is the widget to which LizW refers.

Had a look at James's blog and can't see what he's got that I have too. But his spelling is better.
 

Thanks Paul, Chris, Liz, and the Archangel Jennie. Incidentally, Paul, yours is one of the ones I can't read :(

Since posting this morning, I've done the usual 'switch off PC, then unplug Router so it can cool down from its usual happy state of glowing cherry-red and exploding'. Very cheering to find your comments on reconnecting, though less cheering still to find the problem!

I'm up-to-date with my anti-virus, and on checking via Richard's laptop (which isn't networked to my PC, and is up-to-date with a different anti-virus), where I am now, I get the same pop up error message saying "Internet Explorer cannot open [URL]. Operation Aborted".

Thanks particularly to Liz for the suggestion of stopping the page load just before it finishes: that works, ta (and apologies for bleary imprecision - Unity's blog is Ministry of Truth, in the second block of external links)!

However, a Google search (and checking other findings on the http://internetexplorer.titeblog.com/ link that's helpfully appeared below) reveals what appears to be the problem: it seems something has changed in the last day either in IE or in Sitemeter.com, so any sites using that tracking code are crashing Internet Explorer.

Does that make sense to people?
 

Oh, and now I must say thank you Simon, too. Lovely to see you - and, more importantly, was I convincinhg on Image of the Fendahl? ;-)
 

My own blog is doing it with me and the point it aborts is when it tries to download the sitemeter code
 

Just removed the Sitemeter link from my front page and it is working.

So Sitemeter is the problem.
 

PPS. I always use Firefox, but made an exception to test this :-)
 

I've got the same problem on another site at www.onlinefocus.org.

Looking at the announcements pages on their site they are doing some maintenance on some servers - but not s25, which is the one I'm onn.

I would follow Duncan's advice and remove sitemeter, except I don't want to lose data if I can avoid it.
 

Peter, I think it is this posting on their blog:
http://weblog.sitemeter.com/2008/07/17/sitemeter-icons-vanishing/

Whatever they say, IE seems to crashing when trying to access the icon
 

Sorry Chris, got the wrong Black...
 

You're welcome. Hopefully the Sitemeter problem will get fixed soon, but if that workaround gets too annoying in the meantime, a lot of the affected blogs are also syndicated on LJ, where they're loading correctly. That will include any blog that's on the Lib Dem Blog Aggregator, as that has its own feed. You'd still have to click through to the main site to read comments, of course.
 

Pause for Irony:

Because of this problem, Sitemeter's own site is down if you try to access it via IE
 

Delete sitemeter?!! That's like cutting my right hand off! Oh all right-i'll try to make it invisible.
 

Things see,m back to normal now :)