Thought some of you techie people might know the answer to this...

Apart from the fact that I've experienced so many computer problems over the past few months I'm ready to chuck the whole lot out of the window, I'm having trouble with IE9. I've been running this for ages without problem.

I recently bought a new laptop, also running IE9 but some websites don't show up correctly. The laptop is identical in every way to the old one, where the websites show up fine. For example, I went to download iTunes, but as soon as clicked 'Download' I just got a blank screen and no download. When I do this on the old laptop, a little window pops up in the top LH corner, then the download begins at the bottom. I've checked pop-up settings and they are the same. Eventually, I managed to get Safari onto the new laptop where the download worked fine.

What I cannot understand is why IE9 is behaving differently on two identical machines? I have checked all the security settings etc. and they are identical. Java is also up-to-date on both as is all other Microsoft updates. It's almost as if something is blocking things appearing? The old laptop is running AVG, the new one is running Microsoft Security Essentials. The new one had a free trial of McAffee on which I removed before installing MSE. I wondered whether it might be something to do with this, though I did download a tool from their website which was supposed to remove every trace of it so there was no conflict.

Any suggestions (apart from the usual change to Safari, Chrome, Firefox etc.!)?

It depends how techie you want to get ...

You can get a plugin for IE (possbly the functionality is built in to IE9, I can't remember offhand), that allows you to see the HTTP headers etc. that IE is sending and receiving. There may also be JavaScript errors which you should be able to see somewhere.
Going even deeper, you can download wireshark and get a packet capture at the TCP/IP level.

Some of this may give a clue if you compare the results from the 2 machines.

But it's difficult to resist the inevitable suggestion to use Firefox or Chrome ...

Chris

Thanks - I'm pretty sure it's something in IE9 which is either blocking Flash Player or Java, although both these are downloaded and up-to-date (and show in Chrome etc.). For example, in one site, where there should be picture, I just get a message which says "You need to install Flash version 6 or higher". Also websites where you hover over a menu to get the options don't work. It's driving me quite mad! I've trawled the internet, and it seems quite common, yet I cannot find a solution

I think you have security settings very high? Check in option menu for security "zone" I think. Try =medium=

I had terrible trouble with IE9 and Flashplayer - so much so that I logged a bug with Adobe. There is a thread (something like "Flash Player 10.3.183.5 does not work") on the Adobe User Forum. There was a fix on the site which worked for some, but not for me.

I couldn't get it work on this PC and switched to Firefox - my other machine has no problems

Interestingly Adobe has dropped Flash for mobile devices and it is going to be superseded across the web by other technologies. I've had no end of trouble with it in the past, trying to get old versions off PCs, install latest versions. It's horrible. Good riddance when it's dead.

Anyway, I agree with Tenor Viol, if you are having problems with IE and Flash, use Firefox. It's a better browser anyway.

Thanks!

I've solved all my problems - I've gone back to IE8 and everything's working fine. I might try reinstalling IE9 and see if if works again; if not, I know I can go back to IE8 or use a different browser!