Repro help needed on Win98

[annathepiper]

Okay folks, this is a weird one.

We've got a user with Win98 and IE 6 reporting issues accessing pages on our Autos site. The behavior she's seeing is that when she's just navigating around the site in general, she's getting a lot of occurrences of our standard "page not found" page, which is branded with NWClassifieds text. An ad she tried to place, in particular, is coming up not found. She says this has been going on for her for months.

I've got a Win98 virtual machine here at work, and it's got IE 6 on it, but I can't repro the problem. I'm trying to figure out if it might be a question of her ISP being wacky, or something.

Anybody out there still on Win98 with IE 6? If you are and you can repro this problem, let me know! Thanks in advance.

Comments

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Anybody out there still on Win98 with IE 6?

Yep, I'm stuck with that at work - the time clock program won't run on anything better.

I tried a dozen cars or so at random and didn't get any errors at all. I don't know much about how IE works, but could she be missing a plug-in like Java or Shockwave? That gave me fits a long time when we went to Firefox 2 at home.

I did a quick Google search for .cfm file type and found an Ask Leo article that might help: "Why do my ".cfm" files work in some browsers and not others?" (http://ask-leo.com/why_do_my_cfm_files_work_in_some_browsers_and_not_others.html)

[annathepiper]

Thanks for checking, I appreciate it!

Do you know if you have Service Pack 1 for IE 6 installed? I do, and I have a theory that this might be part of the problem. I can't get IE 6 without the Service Pack 1 installed, since a plain Win98 install comes with IE 5 and I can't get IE 6 without the service pack off IE's page on microsoft.com.

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

No clue offhand and I'm already home. I can check in the morning, should be under Help - About, right?

[annathepiper]

Yeah. Thanks again!

Win98 & IE6

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the delay, see my blog about the crapload of cash yesterday.

Here's the About info from the Internet Explorer I used -

Version: 6.0.2800.1106
Cipher Strength: 128-bit
Product ID:55736-835-6919386-04009
Update Versions:; SP1; Q912812; Q837009; Q891781; q313829; Q918439; Q916281;

I'm guessing that SP1 means that yes, I do have Service Pack 1.

Re: Win98 & IE6

[annathepiper]

Yep, that's SP1 for IE6. Thank you much for checking. :)

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Tell her that the problem is her computer. She needs to switch to Macintosh.

;-)

[annathepiper]

Yeah, that'll go over real well. ;)

(Or it would, if I were actually on tap to communicate directly with the customer, which I am not. I am only on tap to investigate the problem!)

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Haha, it got me to thinking about how funny would be if you consistently replied to all problems:

User error: Using the wrong operating system. Switch to Macintosh.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, and then the user says "you want to give me two thousand dollars to get a new computer?" I reiterate, that'll go over real well. ;)

(Though actually, I suspect that the problem may be that her browser is actually too old to handle our site pages.)

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Hmm yeah. If she's still on '98, there probably a pretty high chance she's not exactly using the newest version of IE!

[annathepiper]

She says she's using IE 6--however, if she hasn't installed the Service Pack 1 that Borg released to do a bunch of bug and security fixes, that may in fact be the problem. I've asked our webmaster to see if she can confirm that.

[howlinhobbit.livejournal.com]

When they say "Ok, gimme 2 grand for a new computer" you can respond with, "Alright then, switch to Linux!"

Either one is a step up.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, and that will go over just about as well as telling them to get a new computer. Not everybody's got the tech know-how necessary to set up a whole new OS on their computer, not to mention the time to learn it. Yes, I know Ubuntu is supposed to be easy, but the point remains. ;)

"Your computer/OS/browser sucks, get a better one" is never the correct answer when you're trying to solve a user's problem. That's really not what they want to hear, and it's a surefire way to get the user pissed off. Especially if they're perfectly happy otherwise with their computer, and you are trying to entice them to come use your site.

[howlinhobbit.livejournal.com]

Anna sez:
"Your computer/OS/browser sucks, get a better one" is never the correct answer when you're trying to solve a user's problem.

Yeah... I know. My first "high tech" job was phone support at the Borg. But I just couldn't help myself. :-)

[annathepiper]

Yeah yeah yeah. ;)

Don't get me wrong--I'm very sympathetic to the urge to just tell her to get an OS that doesn't suck. I mean, damn, Win98. Though I suppose it could be worse. She could be running WinME...

... but still. The scary thing is, this isn't the oldest OS we've got in our userbase, according to our stats. There's at least one user out there that hits our site from Win 3.1. O.O

[solarbird]

I can just hear jwz reflexively typing "set user_ban howlinhobbit" into the lj console right now, and he doesn't even read Anna's lj!

[annathepiper]

*pokes* Now now, be nice. :)

[solarbird]

Why?

[annathepiper]

Because I'll give you a tasty cracker!

[solarbird]

It had better be a good cracker.

[annathepiper]

Very good! Crunchy and savory!

[howlinhobbit.livejournal.com]

Dunno who jwz is, but hey!, I'm used to being 86'd. ;-)