Before my home page starts to download, a yellow triangle containing a black exclamation mark appears in the left-hand corner of the bottom tray. As downloading commences, the triangle is joined by the words “Error on page”. Once the download has finished the words change to “Done, but with errors on page” although there are no apparent errors. After a few seconds, the words disappear but the triangle remains on permanently. As each subsequent page of the website is downloaded, the sequence of error messages is repeated. Neither the triangle nor the error messages appear with any other website or when accessing emails. The computer is running Windows XP SP3. How can I remove this annoyance?

Given the error messages which you have described I can assume that you are using Internet Explorer as your web browser. The messages indicate that Internet Explorer is having some difficulty rendering content on that particular web page and therefore wants to inform you that some errors have occurred. More specifically, there could be something actually wrong with the code for that particular web page. The reason that the web page may not appear to have any problems (despite the message that there are errors) is because often these errors are just within the source code of the web page (i.e. the code which the page has been written in) and do not necessarily manifest themselves as something wrong with how the page displays. Alternatively, the problem could be with some minor part of the web page, resulting in some kind of small inconsistency on the page which is hardly noticeable. In any case, since the problem is not occurring on other web pages it would be safe to assume that there is something wrong with your home page and probably doesn’t warrant much further investigation.

However, if you find that now you are noticing the problem occurs on other web pages as well (since the error at the bottom of the screen has now been brought to your attention) then we should take a further look at the problem since it is unlikely that all web pages which you visit have this problem. First, you should always ensure that the computer is running the latest version of Internet Explorer with all the latest updates. Quite often there can be small issues with the rendering engine used within web browsers, resulting in the browser not rendering the web page completely correct. Additionally, some web pages use more recent web standards (such as CSS3 and HTML5) which may not necessarily be supported by older browsers, that may see some of this new code as errors rather than valid code. Updating Internet Explorer is a fairly simple process of going to Windows Update (windowsupdate.microsoft.com) and then following the prompts to update to the latest supported version. Be aware that the most recent version of Internet Explorer which you can use is Internet Explorer 8, as the latest version of Internet Explorer (9) is only supported on computers running Windows Vista and Windows 7.

If the computer is running the latest version of Internet Explorer then we should next check whether scripting and other items (such as ActiveX and Java) are blocked. These are essentially add-ons which allow interactive content to be displayed on web pages, and if they have been disabled then it could cause the page not to display correctly and indicate that there is an error. Whether these aspects are enabled or disabled is controlled through the security settings within the browser. In Internet Explorer, go to the “Tools” menu > “Internet Options”. In the window that appears, select the “Security” tab. Click “Reset all zones to default level” which will reset all of the security settings to their defaults, then click OK to save and close. Restart Internet Explorer and check whether the problem continues.

At this point there is still a range of possible causes of the issue, so the easiest method to eliminate most possible causes is to reset Internet Explorer. This will essentially restore Internet Explorer to a factory default state, disabling all add-ons and resetting all settings to their original state. To complete the reset go to the “Tools” menu > “Internet Options” and select the “Advanced” tab. At the bottom of the window you should see a “Reset” button. Click this button and the confirmation window will appear. Tick “Delete personal settings” and then click the “Reset” button. Once Internet Explorer has finished resetting, restart the browser and check whether the problem still occurs. Assuming that the problem no longer occurs, you can start to reconfigure Internet Explorer to the previous settings which you were using. If you wish to re-enable the add-ons which were disabled as part of the reset process then go to the “Tools” menu > “Manage Add-ons”, where you will be able to enable the add-ons which were recently disabled. Be aware, there is a good chance that one of those add-ons was causing the problem so I suggest that you enable the add-ons one at a time, each time checking whether the problem occurs again. If you do find that one of the add-ons causes the problem I suggest you leave that add-on disabled for the moment and perhaps conduct some additional research into the issue, now that you know the root cause, particularly whether an update or workaround is available which resolves the conflict between that add-on and Internet Explorer.

If after resetting Internet Explorer the issue continues then there isn’t much else we can do, although it seems possible that you may be visiting a series of websites which all have errors (particularly if the problem does not happen on absolutely every single website that you visit, but only a subset of those websites). Nevertheless, if the web pages still render correctly despite the errors then you should be able to safely ignore the errors. However, if you do find that problems start to occur then you may also wish to consider switching to a different web browser. There are plenty of other browsers available, such as the free Mozilla Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox) and Google Chrome (www.google.com/chrome) which may not produce the same errors as Internet Explorer. Additionally, these two web browsers use completely different rendering engines to Internet Explorer so they will hopefully render the web page without errors.