Last night I visited a friend who was experiencing a problem with Internet Explorer (IE) 7 on his Windows XP with Service Pack (SP) 2 computer, he had recently updated IE7 from the Microsoft update site and now every time he tried to view a web page he received the message “Webpage cannot be displayed”.

I reviewed his computer settings and all appeared to be OK, the problem was obviously associated with the IE7 update and the changes made to the file signatures. I remember reading a recent Microsoft knowledge base article about compatibility problems with older versions of antivirus and security software. Although his subscription was up to date he was still running an older version of his antivirus software.

From the knowledge base article this problem can occur with IE7 on Windows XP, Server 2003 and Windows Vista computers

To resolve the problem I decided to remove and reinstall a later updated version of his antivirus software after which IE7 opened and he was able to access web pages without a problem, the older version of the antivirus application was causing the conflict, it shows that you should not just subscribe and apply updates to your antivirus and security software, but should update the version as well if possible

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