Corrupted Cache / Slider Bar Issue.

[me]

Hello;

We have a great number of users who recently began having problems with IE.
The list of symptoms include not being able to browse to any site (DNS -
Server not found "friendly page" comes up at every internet site request),
not being able to adjust the size of the IE cache (the slider bar appears
"broken"), and some users, but not all, are able to browse the intranet, but
not the internet.

Here are some things about our setup. We are using proxy.pac to control how
our internal proxy servers are accessed. The internal proxies do not cache
anything, our external (internet) proxies cache. The proxy.pac script sends
clients direct for anything on the intranet and uses the proxy for things
not on the intranet. The proxy.pac script is ~20K (mostly exceptions for
hosts found on the intranet in domains that exist both on the intranet and
internet). All of our proxy servers are running Squid 2.5. The internal
proxy servers run SmartFilter on top of Squid.

The stations are configured not to cache the proxy.pac and are set to a 10mb
local cache. The problem seems to happen with both IE 5.5 and IE 6 users.
The problem existed before we converted to load-balanced non-caching proxy
servers on the inside (we had a single caching proxy server on the inside
previously).

Rebuilding the IE cache by removing the entire directory structure and
copying over the structure from the default profile fixes the problem
temporarily for every user that has it. We have some users who never
complain of having the problem again, while other users have the problem
almost every day.

If anyone has seen anything similar and can offer pointers as to where we
can start looking, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Brad Watson
Siemens Dematic

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

The stations are configured not to cache the proxy.pac and are set to a 10mb local cache.

Depending on what they are being used for that might be too small.
CacheSentry might be an option if you need to maintain caches that
small. From the same site you can get a tool to help analyse how
the TIF is being used (CacheMon2 IIRC).