Michael said:
Well, whoda thunk it? I know nothing like me has
encountered a problem that apparently no one out there in
microsoft land can answer.
For the 3rd time on this site (and after 2
hours "playing" with the nice lady on the other end of
the microsoft support line) I will state my problem again.
After installing SP2, my computer is unable to accept
cookies NO MATTER WHAT I SET MY INTERNET OPTIONS TO - and
on top of that, when I go into Control Panel - there is
no icon for Cookies.
Is anyone up to the challenge
I know what you said, but I think we will go through this from the
beginning.
First - Do this:
Close all Internet Explorer Windows.
1 - Click Start button
2 - On the Start menu click Control Panel
3 - In the Control Panel Window click the Internet Options icon
4 - When the internet properties window opens click the Privacy tab.
5 - You will see a slider in this window
6 - Pull the slider right down to the very bottom
7 - You should now see the legend 'Accept All Cookies'
8 - Click Apply
9 - Click on the Advanced button
10 - Check the "Override automatic cookie handling" checkbox
11 - Select "accept" in both columns
12 - Select "Always allow session cookies"
13 - Now click OK
14 - Click OK again
Now - download, install, run, update and scan with the following
applications:
Spybot Search and Destroy (Free!)
http://www.safer-networking.net/en/download/index.html
(Immunize with this one as well.)
Lavasoft AdAware (Free and up)
http://www.lavasoft.de/support/download/
CWShredder (Free!)
** No longer updated as of July 29, 2004 - however, still a great
product and should still be ran **
http://www.softbasket.com/download/s_8114.shtml
Hijack This! (Free)
http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/
( Tutorial:
http://hjt.wizardsofwebsites.com/ )
Once you have downloaded, installed, ran, updated and scanned with (and
where appropriate, immunized with) each of these applications, then download
and use the following two other applications/registry merges:
SpywareBlaster (Free!)
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/sbdownload.html
IE-SPYAD (Free!)
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/resource.htm
Now that we are sure your system is free of Spy/Ad/Malware - now we can try
a few other things.
1 - Make sure your time and Date settings are correct.
2 - Delete all your cookies
(In IE - Tools --> Internet Options --> General tab --> Delete Cookies,
Delete all temporary internet files (include all offline content) and change
your Settings to 10MB for Temporary Internet Files and then close all IE
windows.)
3 - Turn off (temporarily) any Popup Stoppers/Firewalls (including SP2s new
additions.)
4 - Use the following application to insure you have erased all traces of
old files:
12Ghosts Wash
http://12ghosts.com/ghosts/wash.htm
5 - Do the following registry edit (for ONE Reboot)
Clear the Page File at System Shutdown
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/244/
And when it you reboot, undo it (it can slow your reboots down enormously.)
Now - after all that - try to go to a site you couldn't access due to cookie
trouble.
You can uninstall whatever applications you want, but I recommend keeping
SpyBot and SpywareBlaster at the very least and keeping them updated.
If all that fails, you may want to consider the following options:
1 - Create a new user on your PC, logon as that use and try the same thing
there.
2 - Install Mozilla Firefox and see if that works where IE is not.
3 - Perform a repair on Internet Explorer.
(
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318378 )
Come back and let us know if any of that helped!
