A friend of mine (and former boss) is having a problem logging into his ISP's webmail (http://webmail.charter.net) from his personal computer. When he attempts to log in, he is given an error message saying something to the extent that cookies must be enabled to use the site. At the time he was using IE6. Oddly enough, he has no problem logging into any other site (work email, banks, credit cards, etc). I went on Google to troubleshoot cookie issues, and did the following steps:

I had him check to see if the security settings in IE6 were incorrect, or if there was anything listed as a restricted website in the restricted site settings. Nothing was there. We also completely cleaned out his temporary internet files, cookies, and history, and confirmed this by going into the cache/cookie folder under Documents & Settings and making sure there weren't any extra cookies that weren't getting deleted.

I also learned that he has Norton firewall installed, to which I advised that he try to disable that completely. He did, but that didn't change anything. There's also nothing in the Norton software that showed the Charter site as restricted in any way. He even tried different browsers, like Firefox and IE7 with nothing, even after the Windows firewall was also turned off.

The last thing I thought it could be is if his router/modem had somehow decided to block access to the site (I know my Linksys router lets me restrict certain sites in the firmware), but the other computers on the same LAN (another desktop and his work laptop) can all access the webmail site with no problem.

Any ideas as to what we should try next? He called Charter for help before he asked me, and aside from clearing the cookies under Internet Options, they weren't any help.

Thanks!

6/17/2008 8:34:25 AM

FORMAT C:

6/17/2008 8:05:25 PM

then

re-install teh internetz

6/17/2008 8:28:36 PM

^^ That was going to be a last-resort option if we couldn't figure something out.

I'm betting that it's the Norton software, and even though it says its disabled, the damage has already been done.

6/18/2008 8:08:32 AM

Quote :

"He called Charter for help before he asked me, and aside from clearing the cookies under Internet Options, they weren't any help."

haha not a surprise. charter is absolutely horrendous.

6/18/2008 8:11:01 AM

umm.... "format c" was a joke. you dont wipe your hard drive because you have a shitty ISP.

use another computer to get on your host, FTP your entire mail folder and all your web content to an external drive, fire your shitty ISP, and get a new one.

6/18/2008 9:11:26 AM

Although it may be a shitty ISP, it's not the ISPs fault, since he can access the webmail on every other computer but this particular one. Something on the computer is blocking the cookie the webmail site is sending, for some reason.

Fortunately, he doesn't use a mail client to access his mail, so everything is stored on the ISP email server, so in the end if the computer is really gunked up and he decides to format (which he does every couple of years anyways), he wouldn't lose any email.

6/18/2008 9:23:52 AM

hmmph.

so Format C: was the right answer then?

6/18/2008 3:51:33 PM

Quite possibly.

6/19/2008 8:11:54 AM

Quote :

"so Format C: was the right answer then?"

lol It doesn't matter that your answer had the wrong meaning, it was still right.

6/19/2008 10:16:10 AM