One of my friend's PC has been giving a problem for the last few days. Whenever a pop-up window appears, it is just blank now. Java and Java Script are enabled. Can anybody please help? By the way, the problem happens in both IE and Netscape. I checked for any "hosts" file. But, no problems there. He uses Windows 2000, IE 6.0 and Netscape 7.0.

More info about the problem:
These pop-ups are of "needed" type. For example, when he goes to music-related web site, if he wants to preview a music clip, he click on the music clip link, it pops up a small window with the music player (Windows Media, Real or Flash player) and plays the music. It used to work before. Now, the pop-up window is completely blank.

Also, I noticed one weird thing on his PC. When I go to "Add/Remove Programs" in the control panel, IE does not show up as an installed program. Now that I think about it, Netscape also does not show up there. I remember that you could "repair" the Internet Explorer by going thru "Add/Remove Programs". But, it does not show up there.

By the way, he did upgrade from IE 5.0 to IE 6.0. But that was long before this problem surfaced.

Was anything installed on the computer in the day or two before it started happening?

Nothing installed recently.

Also, I noticed one weird thing. When I go to "Add/Remove Programs" in the control panel, IE does not show up. Now that I think about it, Netscape also does not show up there. I remember in Windows NT, you could "repair" IE by going thru "Add/Remove Programs".

By the way, he did upgrade from IE 5.0 to IE 6.0. But that was long before this problem surfaced.

I have that happen rarely on a system that has nothing special installed on it, but I have it happen all the time with a popup/advertisement blocker.

When the pop up gets through, that ad does not. So it gets a blank page. When the ad gets caught, I get a message that says I have an ad, do I want to block it?

Spybot does that for me, but you might have another program that does it for you, but a bit different. I have it at work, and get all kinds of blank pages. I visit the same sites at home, and never get the blank pages, still get the popups, but I don't care at home. I have the bandwidth to spare.

My 2 cents.

Hop

try this
close all browser windows
go to start - run
type "regsvr32 urlmon.dll" (without the quotes)
click OK or hit enter
click OK on the next window and try browser again

p0larbear, I will ask my friend to try your suggestion. By the way, what does that command do?

After running "regsvr32 urlmon.dll" you may need to open IE > Tools menu > Internet Options > Programs tab and click the "Reset Web Settings" button.

The command "regsvr32" re-registers a file.

Sometimes a few dll files will need to be re-registered, but the one p0larbear suggested will usually fix the problem, so try that first. Good luck.

thanks Alan

Bingo! The "regsvr32 urlmon.dll" command fixed the problem. Thanks, p0larbear and Alan!

p0larbear gets the credit on this one. I'm just riding his coat tails

Glad it worked for ya.