Whenever I attempt to open a PDF file in Internet Explorer (through a website link or email message) either a blank page appears (with “Done” at the bottom of the screen) or a page appears with text saying “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” with a button with a “Diagnose Connection Problems” button. When I click the button a Windows Network Diagnostics window appears with the message “Windows did not find any problems with this computer’s network connection”. At the moment every time I need to open a PDF file I need to right-click on the file and select “Save Target As…” then save the file to my computer and open the file locally. The computer is running Windows Vista Home Premium and Internet Explorer 8.

Internet Explorer and Windows Vista does not have the ability to natively open PDF files so they require the installation of a third-party program, normally Adobe Reader (www.adobe.com) which allows for PDF files to be opened. When you install Adobe Reader (or other similar PDF reading applications) it also installs an add-on for Internet Explorer (plus other browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox) which allows PDF files to be viewed within the browser without the need to download the PDF file and then open the file in a separate program. Obviously this in-browser viewing is not working in your case, so our first troubleshooting step should be checking whether Adobe Reader has been installed correctly. In the first instance I would recommend uninstalling Adobe Reader (or whichever PDF viewing application you are using) from the computer through the Add or Remove Programs control panel. Once it has been uninstalled we will reinstall Adobe Reader. I realise that some readers may use a different PDF viewing application, but for the sake of consistency and troubleshooting we will use Adobe Reader in this situation. Go to the Adobe Reader website and click the button to download and install the latest version of the reader. Once this has finished restart Internet Explorer and then check whether the problem continues.

Should the problem continue then it just became quite a bit more difficult to diagnose. I would be interested to find out whether the problem being experienced is limited to Adobe Reader in Internet Explorer or is indicative of a wider problem. To test this theory we will install a different PDF reader on your computer. Uninstall Adobe Reader (again) to make way for the new PDF reader installation. We are going to download and install Foxit Reader (www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader) which is a good alternative PDF reading application. Just be aware that during the installation there are options to install various toolbars which, if you are like a lot of readers, you would prefer are not installed on your system so you may wish to untick those options. Once Foxit Reader has finished installing, launch the program and set this as your default PDF reader, which should also allow you to read PDF files within Internet Explorer. Restart Internet Explorer and then try reading a PDF file. If the problem has been resolved then it seemed to be due to an incompatibility with Adobe Reader. In this case, if you are happy with Foxit Reader then you may wish to continue using that since it is a working solution.

Alternatively, if you would like to get Adobe Reader working, then please contact me again with these newfound results and we can investigate the problem further. Additionally, should Foxit Reader not work within Internet Explorer then the problem appears to be more complex than anticipated so please let me know.