HELP! Malformed HTML on one of our server

[mikeglover]

One of servers has suddenly developed a strange problem.

When I try to go to any website using IE6 (yes i know it isn't supported)

I get errors of Malformed HTML and when I do get to some website (BBC - Homepage) Its a load of html coding but for some reason the < in the tags have been replaced by the number 8.

I then installed Firefox and get the same thing, so i dont think this is just and IE6 issue.

 

An example of the first line in the browser when I go to the microsoft website is:

<8html xmhns="http://www.s3.org/1999/xhtmh dir="htr" lanc="en"> Micrksoft Corporatioj8script

 

The Micrksoft worries me. Anyone got any ideas or seen this before.

 

Before anyone says. Yes I have uptodate vs definition and doing a complete scan right now.

[Joh619]

Wierdly enough, one of our Admin Staff's PCs just started showing HTML instead of websites this morning, and most of the images were distorted. I just went to check to see if it was weird HTML, but the problem seems to have gone away now

 

She's using IE 8 though, and the 3 other PCs that are on in the school are fine.

[SYNACK]

Could be all sorts of things, first thing I would check is if the html is making it to the pc alright. To do this I would open "telnet BBC - Homepage 80" and type in "get". This should fire back some HTML which may or may not look alright. If it does it is probably the browser and/or a helper object like an AV scanner helpfully messing it up, if not the problem is most likely upstream with a dodgy proxy or a faulty network card.

 

If all of the other protocols that your server is using work alright it is probably not the network card and as you have tried another browser it is unlikely to be directly to do with IE. It does sound like a proxy somewhere is misbehaving and so if you have the ability to connect directly even to an internal site to check this would provide further clues. If you want to go really indepth wireshark is a great program to look at the raw IP traffic and see whether that is corrupted also.

[mikeglover]

Wierdly enough, one of our Admin Staff's PCs just started showing HTML instead of websites this morning, and most of the images were distorted. I just went to check to see if it was weird HTML, but the problem seems to have gone away now

 

She's using IE 8 though, and the 3 other PCs that are on in the school are fine.

 

Yeah, sounds very similar. We are on EMBC proxy.

The problem seems to have fixed itself now so looks like it was to do with proxy their end.

 

Cheers,

[knelmes]

Just to let you know, we were getting this issue this morning too and we're on EMBC as well, so looks like it was them.

[Jobos]

EMBC said one of their squid proxies had crashed when I reported the fault this morning.