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General discussion

I can't view PDFs online

Sep 4, 2005 1:54PM PDT

My computer has Windows XP Media Edition 2005 and I have Adobe Reader 7.0 installed on my computer. I can save PDFs and open them in Adobe Reader, but I cannot view PDFs online. When I try to, IE (6.0) freezes and crashes.
I know that I should be using something other than IE, like Mozilla Firefox, but when I installed that and opened the browser, it just said "looking up (webpage)" forever and did nothing. Also, sometimes when I tried to open it, nothing happened. I opened up Windows Task Manager to see what was going on, and it showed between 5-10 firefox.exe images. I have run virus scans and spyware scans and still have both problems.

Discussion is locked

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RE:
Sep 4, 2005 9:35PM PDT

1. Internet Explorer may display a blank page with a placeholder icon instead of displaying a Portable Document Format (.pdf) file with Adobe Acrobat Reader. This behavior occurs because the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to the .pdf file does not end in ''.pdf'' (for example, the file is opened by using script or the file is dynamically generated) and the content-type header (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions [MIME] type) that is returned by the server is ''unknown/unknown''. Previous versions of IE open Adobe Acrobat Reader as a plug-in, but IE6.x does not support Netscape-style plug-ins, which BTW, could happen with any unrecognized plun-in, [Q305153] and [Q306790].

Note: The article [Q555027] explains that when you try to connect to web site by using Internet Explorer 6 or Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 1 - it may open with blank page, instead of web site and the problem could be that some dll's didn't register themselves. Check the registering process in this article as well as downloading and following the instructions for ''IEFix'' - a general purpose fix for Internet Explorer (Win 98/ME/2000/XP).

2. When Acrobat or Adobe Reader is installed on a system that includes a browser, the browser is automatically configured to open PDF files within the browser window and the ActiveX plug-in files are installed. However, you can configure your web browser to open PDF files either in the browser window or in a separate Acrobat window.

? To open a PDF file in Internet Explorer, choose File, Open (or Open File).

a. Click the Browse button, choose All Files from the ''Files Of Type'' pop-up menu, and then navigate to the location (path) of the PDF file to be opened.

b. Select the PDF file, and then click Open, which then opens in Internet Explorer.

? To configure the browser to use Acrobat or Adobe Reader to open PDF files:

a. Quit Internet Explorer or AOL.

b. Start Acrobat or Adobe Reader.

c. Choose Edit, Preferences and select Internet in the list on the left.

d. Deselect Display PDF in Browser, and click OK.

Note: If Acrobat or Adobe Reader displays a PDF file from the local hard drive but won't display a web PDF file, the web server has a problem serving the file. The only recourse is to contact the webmaster of the site from which you found the PDF file and tell them they have a site problem.

3. Otherwise, check the Adobe ''Support'' site.

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Thanks, but didn't work
Sep 6, 2005 3:59AM PDT

Thanks for the information, but it did not work. I saved and ran IEFix, but when I tried to view a PDF online, IE froze again. I did see, though, that the website I tried it at was dynamically generating the PDF and the URL ended in ".aspx" as apposed to ".pdf". As to going to the Adobe support site, the Adobe site has PDFs that run automatically, according to one of their technicians I have talked to, which causes my IE to freeze.
I am not sure if this is helpful or not, but when I ran IEFix, it said for me to insert Windows XP Pro CD2 to reinstall an IE file...I have no such disk. I did find the file on my hard drive though...
Would it maybe be easier to dl an older version of IE to use for right now?

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Re: didn't work.
Sep 6, 2005 7:48AM PDT

Cursorcowboy usually supplies about 10 possible solutions in his posts (this one is modest), so "doesn't work" isn't really useful, as it doesn't indicate what didn't work.

In his #2 are two ways to configure Adobe Reader. One is the default way, where it opens a pdf on the web as an IE add-in, the other (the second bullit) is a way to configure Adobe to NOT use the IE add-in but tell IE to just the program. That might work.

Otherwise, download foxit pdfrd from one of the hits of http://www.google.com/search?q=download+pdfrd and see of that works. On my Windows 95 computer, it gave some unexpected error when printing, so I uninstalled it again, but it might work with you as an Adobe alternative.

Kees

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Fixed
Sep 6, 2005 10:45AM PDT

Yeah, so I kinda looked over the part about having Adobe not open PDFs in IE... sorry. That fixed it.

Thanks for the help Cursorcowboy and Kees Bakker.

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Reading PDF Files
Sep 7, 2005 3:20PM PDT

in IE is a problem at work also. We have Mac OS9 and Internet explorer. I always have to download the PDF files to my desktop. Any time I want to view a PDF file it is dowmloaded to my desktop by default.
There is no other way for me to view a PDF while in IE.
Seems to be that way in OSX also.
You have Windows, IE and a PC. That's the difference.
I did like reading the help suggestions from cursercowboy and Kees. Both provide good info always.

-Kevin