User clicks shortcut for website but browser tries to go to the IP address and stops?

[reggiep]

I'm in the middle of playing with my mandatory profiles and one of the reasons was to try to fix this problem. It didn't work.

If a user clicks on a shortcut in their start menu to go to a website e.g. www.outlook.com or Prenton High School for Girls the browser opens but then tries to go to the IP address of the site. In the bottom of the browser you can see it saying "Connecting to site 65.54.186.17" but it never resolves to the sites address.
If the user then clicks the stop button in the browser the correct web address appears in the address bar, then if they click refresh it goes to the site.

Its annoying and some staff find this step too hard to grasp!

Can anyone tell me why the broswer would be doing this or how I could alter the shortcut to open the browser then go to the address?


Thanks

[Michael]

Create a shortcut from iexplore.exe, within C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer to your desktop.

Rename the shortcut as required, then update the Target path so it reads:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://www.outlook.com/

Apply changes, then try the shortcut you've created.

[reggiep]

@Michael I did try that but with same result.
I discovered that shortcuts to internal websites worked fine so I created some pages on our internal web server that redirect to the sites I was trying to get to.
A bit of a workaround without fixing the problem but it works now!

[Stuart_C]

That sounds a little like proxy server issues... I normally get that, or something similar when I try and connect to a proxy server that isn't there (or alternatively if there is no proxy set as my Firewall blocks all outside access except for the servers)