Can't accept cookies

[joppelt]

Looking for some new ideas here.

My dad's PC can no longer accept cookies. This severely impacts him on lots of web pages. For instance, he can't even log into a hotmail account.

We've tried changing security settings to accept all cookies. (No help.) We've looked at FAQ bulletins from Microsoft. They make other suggestions such as resetting the system clock. (Made no difference.)

We've turned off all firewalls. (Can't recall if he has MacAfee or Norton, but it was disabled. Microsoft firewall too.) Made no difference.

This happens whether he's on IE, Netscape or Firefox, so that's pretty disconcerting. IE was version 6. Upgraded to Version 7, but that did not help.

He has no popup blockers that I can see.

He's on XP.

If I posted this to the wrong forum. My apologies. Please point me to the proper location.

Thanks.

Joe

[PhilliePhan]

Hi Joe,

-- Definitely Re-enable the firewall!

-- Have you tried deleting the Cookies Folder? There may be some issue with it. Delete it (the folder itself, not just the contents) and let it rebuild.

-- Are you sure there is no AV or Anti-spy app blocking cookies?

Hang in there - I imagine Judy will chime in with a few suggestions of her own.

PP

[jholland1964]

Seems you have done all I would have suggested, EXCEPT, contacting his internet provider. It is possible that THEY are using a proxy server.
A proxy server is a server that sits between your web browsers, and a real server (your internet provider). It intercepts all requests to the real server to see if it can fulfill the requests itself. If not, it forwards the request to the real server. Using proxy servers can really speed things up for the ISP. Most of the major online services such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN all use a large number of proxy servers. Providers will use proxy servers because it will speed things up dramatically in some cases.

Cookie transmission will not occur if the browsers are not set up correctly to use proxy servers. There ARE specific settings that you must use.
So, regardless of how your browser is set as far as accepting cookies, cookies won't be sent or received by your browser if proxy set up is not enabled and configured correctly. Since the cookies aren't making it through to your browser, the Web Site will assume you personally aren't accepting them.

I would check with his internet provider for correct settings. It may very well be that setting have changed since he first set up his connections.

[scraphog]

A couple things I have seen that may or may not help. As a helpdesk specialist back in the day for MSN, we saw how corrupt user tiles and other simple things on the computer affected the ability to update cookies (and MS Passport).

How many users are there on the local machine (user tiles)? Are they all assumed administrators?

Try to make a new user account on the computer and see if that user has the same issues. I'm sure Judy and others will notice that I'm leaning toward a corrupt user account (or profile).

If the security settings for that user can no longer be changed , or that the changes do not seem to work, really point to local corruption. This after checking time settings, browser settings, and deleting temp files and temp internet files, clearing history and deleting cookies point to a bad user profile.

Are you using windows defender? I have also seen two cases where defender caused corrupted user profiles.

[acidedge2004]

The other posts all (clearly) know more than I do but I once made my cookie.txt file a read only file so that I did not accept cookies, thinking this made my comp more secure (I was rather naive). This created similar problems. I had to give the file write settings too. If your dad has doe anything like this then it may be the problem.

[joppelt]

Thanks for the replies so far.

The problem with addressing cookies files or folders that govern one browser is that this problem happens across all browsers, and as far as I can tell, they all put their cookies in different locations.

We've put back all firewalls and other security measures that we dropped for testing. Of course, they were dropped only for testing purposes.

Our current approach is to re-re-re-engage the ISP helpdesk. (To date, they haven't been much help. They essentially keep having him redo the same old basic things like doing "Accept all cookies", etc.)

His next step is to re-install the ISP's software.

[jholland1964]

His next step is to re-install the ISP's software.

I think I would go ahead and do this, it certainly cannot hurt. Just be sure to uninstall it correctly