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 and Internet Explorer, 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 affects 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 cache settings - Tools->Internet Options->Settings... and the Check for newer versions of stored pages options. Make sure either Automatically or Every visit to the page are checked


• 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 the security and privacy levels (each has a tab under Tools->Internet Options) 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 Personal Privacy service, Zone Alarm Suite, 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 Blackboard "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:

IE: Tools->Manage Add-ons->Enable or Disable Add-ins...

Firefox: Tools->Add-ons...

7. Check for web accelerators and disable or uninstall them, or if possible, disable them for this site. 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 AdAware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/) and/or Spybot S&D (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/). 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 an alternative 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 Security Suite. 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 student 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 Hangouts, Blackboard Collaborate, 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 entry.

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.

Note: When a user can get to email and SIS from my.vccs, but then cannot access BB the same way (symptom is they click on BB link and just get the BB login page), this is a different problem. This is a cookie issue whereby they can conflict if you access both My VCCS and Blackboard independently during the same browser session. The short answer is to clear the session_id cookie for learn.vccs.edu, or close the browser and start again.