back button triggers error message in IE5

I have just brought my Windows 2000 /IE5 system up to date with the

latest patches from Microsoft, and now I get the following message

every time I click the "back" button in the forums:

"This page provides potentially unsafe information to an ActiveX

control. Your current security settings prohibit running controls in

this manner. As a result, this page may not display correctly."

which requires the "OK" button to be clicked.

I get this *only* on this site. While I have the IE6 CD, I won't be

putting it up until I believe what I have now is stable, IE5 remains

supported by Microsoft (latest patch released ten days ago), and a

lot of people will never go to IE6.

How long have you been getting this? Did you try rebooting?

You may want to check that a certain page wasn't accidentally added to your "Restricted Sites" list. It's easy to do by accident because it doesn't pop up a dialog (or otherwise notify you, except by changing the tiny icon in the right corner) when you do it. To check, go to Tools > Options > Security and click on "Restricted Sites," then click the "Sites..." button.

BTW, "holding out" with IE5 may not be a very good idea. IE6 is a pretty big step forward in terms of supporting web standards (far from perfect though) and IE5 is just flat-out broken in some areas (especially in regards to the CSS box model). I know it is the site developer's job to make sure his site works on all platforms/browsers, but I feel in the near future, more and more sites are not going to work (or work very well) in broken browsers like IE5. In the end, it is your choice.

(I'm not saying this is the case with photo.net... I doubt it has to do with the fact that you're using IE5...)

googlesyndication.com is indeed listed as a "restricted site". I put it there on the advice of the technical people here to get around a crash caused when the back button was pushed. If I take it out, the problem remains, so I put it back again.

The person getting firewall alerts may be seeing the same problem in a different form. I run the browser using a sandbox account which can't write to anywhere but its own directory.

I used to be responsible for system software upgrades at a very large site. And I learned then that it's much easier to change one thing at a time, because things can break in seemingly unrelated places and the only way to find what caused it is to ask the question "What have I changed recently?" As for the long term, I may give the new Mandrake a try when it comes out in May.