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http://www.mfwbooks.com/products/M50/60/0/0/1

I need some help testing this link with Vista and IE. I have a customer who can get to any page on our website, but when accessing this page, the page doesn't load and the connection to her internet is shut down.

Thank you!

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Dani AI

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A practical triage checklist to separate a client-side Vista/IE problem from a server problem — based on description and ’s point about browsers being the renderer.

Client-side quick checks (non-destructive)

  • Run IE with no add-ons (iexplore -extoff) and try the page.
  • Try a different browser on the same Vista machine (Firefox/Chrome).
  • Test from a different network (mobile tether or another Wi‑Fi) to rule out modem/router interference.
  • Temporarily disable antivirus/parental-control/proxy software that can intercept or block content.
  • Flush DNS and reset socket state:
    ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset
  • If possible, capture an HTTP trace (Fiddler) or a packet capture (Wireshark) so the TCP/RST/FIN flags and SSL/TLS handshake behavior can be examined.

Server-side checks for the site owner

  • Check access/error logs for the customer’s external IP and User‑Agent string for that request. Note status code, response size and whether the connection was closed by the server.
  • Serve a minimal version of the page (strip scripts, ads, big images) and reintroduce resources one-by-one to find a problematic asset.
  • Look at compression/chunked transfer and TLS settings; legacy IE on Vista may fail on modern TLS or certain cipher suites and behave as a dropped connection.
  • If logs show the server completed the response, but the client reported a reset, the issue is almost certainly client-side (filters, drivers or modem firmware).

Likely culprits and practical note

  • Typical causes: browser plugin/ActiveX crash, security software blocking or killing connections, TLS/cipher incompatibility on older IE, corrupt TCP/IP stack, or a malformed resource that triggers a client bug. Collecting the client’s User‑Agent, external IP and a short Fiddler trace usually narrows it quickly.

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Member Avatar for inplainsite

First of all it shouldn't matter if it is in Vista or some other OS as long as the browsers are the same version. The OS isn't the element that is rendering the website to the end user. That is the job of the browser.

Second, This sounds like there is something wrong with the customers computer not your website. I find it hard to believe that your website is shutting down their network connections.

Member Avatar for SolidSolutions

Thanks for the info inplainsite.

However, in trying to explain to the customer that all our tests on different browsers were not showing any problems, I could not satisfy her with us not having any tests on Vista platform. It would help me to be able to explain to her it really is most likely her computer. Not that she will accept that either because ours is the only site that happens to her on, and only on that page so from her viewpoint it is something wrong with our page.

Anyway, I'd appreciate any verifications and other insights.

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