Using Internet Explorer to view the Yahoo website a message appears saying “A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you wish to Debug? Line: 0. Error: ‘y708′ is undefined. Yes. No.”. If I click “Yes” another window appears saying “Just-in-Time Debugging”. I am very wary of following on, as I have been caught in the past with message boxes looking authentic but being some sort of virus causing all kinds of grief. I can stop the message appearing by clicking “No” but need to do this about 12 times before the message goes away for good.

From your description this seems to be a legitimate Internet Explorer error message, although I am pleased that you are wary regarding such messages. In many cases when you are using the internet messages appear which seem like legitimate messages informing you about a problem then asking you to download and install software to fix the identified problem. However, as you have discovered, these generally cause more harm than good. However, in this case the message which appears seems to be a relatively common Internet Explorer message indicating that Internet Explorer is having difficulty understanding some of the code on the webpage which is currently being displayed. In your case, Internet Explorer is having difficulty reading some code on the Yahoo webpage. This is most likely your computer, rather than the Yahoo webpage, since a website which attracts the volume of traffic that Yahoo attracts would generally not have code which causes errors.

Why your installation of Internet Explorer generates these errors is a mystery, as the webpage is most likely perfectly fine but Internet Explorer is having trouble rendering the page. However, we can stop Internet Explorer from alerting you about these errors and instead ignore the errors, which will be much more convenient. In Internet Explorer, go to the “Tools” menu > “Internet Options”. In the Internet Options window that appears, click the “Advanced” tab and look through the “Settings” for two settings named “Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)” and “Disable script debugging (Other)”. Tick these entries and click the OK button. Restart Internet Explorer and the problems should not longer persist.

However, you may find that the webpage does not render correctly because of the errors. The settings which we just enabled will suppress the errors from appearing but not address the underlying problem. As such, the errors are still present just that you are not being informed about the errors. Should the webpage not render correctly due to the errors, and this significantly impacts upon your ability to use the webpage, then you may wish to try using an alternative browser to look at the webpage. Mozilla Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox) is a free, open-source web browser that uses a completely different rendering engine, so you should not encounter any problems with Firefox being unable to render the page like Internet Explorer. If you find that Firefox can view the webpage without problems then you may wish to consider using Firefox as your main web browser. It supports all the internet-based features that Internet Explorer supports, but is also arguably more secure (as Firefox is a completely separate application so it is not integrated into Windows as is Internet Explorer).