Troubleshooting: Browser Problems

This is a comprehensive list of troubleshooting suggestions for students with connectivity problems, particularly for SIS, Canvas, and myVCCS.

The symptoms vary, but students may be seeing a blank screen, or are unable to get past a login screen or get cookie-related errors.

The first step is to get some core information from the student:

ISP

There are ISPs which cause known problems, most commonly AOL. For AOL users, the standard recommendation is to log on, but then minimize the AOL browser window and switch to using a standard browser like Chrome, MS Edge, or Firefox.

 

Browser and version

If the browser is not up to date, it should be patched and upgraded.

Operating system

Although we support older operating systems, they will be more vulnerable to viruses and spyware, and attention should be paid to those issues particularly. For older versions of Windows, which may not support the most up-to-date version of Internet Explorer, an alternative browser is recommended, such as Firefox or Chrome. On alternative operating systems, Firefox is also recommended, as is Safari on Mac OSX. Internet Explorer is no longer supported by Microsoft on Mac operating systems. 

The following instructions assume that the user is using a recent version of Windows, but the instructions can be applied to other browsers and operating systems.

1. Password and account verification

Reset a user's password or have the user change their password and verify that they are using the correct account information

2. Check that the user is using the correct url. Sometimes users bookmark an incorrect url that has subsequently expired.

3. Check the clock time on the user's system and the time zone setting. This can affect how cookies are treated and expired on their machine. The easiest way to do this in Windows is double-click the displayed time on the start bar.

4. Cache

• Check the browser cache settings. 


• Clear the cache - Tools->Internet Options->Delete Files...


• Close browser windows and restart the browser - this should be done after any applied fix.

5. Cookies

• Check security and privacy levels and make sure they are not too high, or specifically allow vccs.edu sites as trusted sites.


• Delete cookies and restart the browser


• Check for privacy and firewall services, e.g. McAfee, Zone Alarm, Norton, etc. - these typically filter cookies as well, and can be configured to allow vccs.edu cookies for example (see #10)


• User reports behavior of web site "flashes between two urls and never displays anything". - cookies are disabled, look for some kind of security setting, or third party firewall/security tool. If they have a security suite, try disabling the Web Filter portion.

6. Check add-ons and extensions, particularly things like AdBlock, Privacy Badger, Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin

7. Check for web accelerators and disable or uninstall them, or if possible, disable them for the site in question. A web accelerator works by pre-downloading pages and compressing them through a proxy. In general proxies can cause problems for sites that use cookies.

8. Install and run anti-virus, and anti-spyware software. Many times a user's machine is infected with adware or spyware that may even be running a web proxy.

9. Check that the computer is up to date, i.e. run Windows Update.

10. Consider installing a different browser such as Chrome or Firefox. This is usually a good permanent fix for problems.

11. Check if the student has installed a security suite such as ZoneAlarm, Norton, or McAfee. This shows up a lot as "it was working until this week" and you can relate it to the date of the install. Have the user disable the suite as a whole first. If that works, you know it is a setting in the suite that needs changing. 

If none of these fixes resolves the problem, one option is to schedule a screen-sharing session with the user using Google Meet, Teams, or Zoom, Remote desktop connection, or something similar like GoToMeeting or join.me. This will enable you to look over a user's shoulder while they are trying to use our systems.

Finally, our resolution may involve scheduling a session, and watching our internal logs.

Please let us know of any alterations or updates we should make to this KB article by leading feedback below.

Thank you.

Note: a separate class of problem is when a home user cannot even connect to our sites. In that case, on windows, the DOS commands ping, tracert and pathping are useful.