Losing proxy settings

[pwds]

I've been seeing more and more of this-

 

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

 

Most likely causes:

You are not connected to the Internet.

The website is encountering problems.

There might be a typing error in the address.

 

This has appeared as a problem for us in the last couple of days and is hitting more and more users randomly around the site.

 

The school uses internet explorer 7 with the latest updates via WSUS and an automatic configuration script distributed via GP as below-

 

Connection/Automatic Browser Configuration

Policy Setting

Automatically detect configuration settings Disabled

Automatic Browser Configuration Enabled

Interval Every 10 minutes

Auto-config URL (.INS file)

Auto-proxy URL (.JS, .JVS, or .PAC file) http://server.school.sch.uk/public/pacfile.pac

 

Sometimes the browser opens and will not load non intranet sites from the start, other times it will start off fine but "lose" internet connection mid browsing.

 

Closing and re-opening the browser ALWAYS seems to resolve the issue.

 

Connection is via Smoothwall to an upstream LEA proxie.

 

Does this mean our Smoothie box is under too high a load, the server the PAC file is on is failing to provide it in time, or is there another problem?

 

Is it worth disabling the ten minute refresh to reduce load and stop a session that was working "losing" settings?

 

This does not affect Firefox which I have installed on the same computer and is configured manually to go out via the LEA proxy (maybe I should set this to SW and see if this does the same thing....)

 

Any thoughts?

[pwds]

The pac for those who are interested-

 

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)

{

var action;

 

if (

(dnsDomainIs(host, ".school.county.sch.uk")) ||

(dnsDomainIs(host, ".lea.org.uk"))

) {

action = "DIRECT";

} else {

action = "PROXY smoothwall.school.county.sch.uk:800; DIRECT";

}

 

if (isPlainHostName(host)) {

action = "DIRECT";

}

if (isInNet(host, "1.2.3.4", "255.255.252.0")) {

action = "DIRECT";

}

 

//alert(host + " " + action);

return action;

 

}

[alunmjones]

i had something similar, turnd out to be a pice of scare ware that was trying to imbed itself in the system and mucking up the Proxy settings, it changed it to something like 127.0.0.1:(random port) if i remember so that the internet couldnt load, also displayed its own error in the web browser.

 

not sure if your problems are similar, had it on a student laptop aswell, tho it couldent get a hold, removing his profile fixed that problem