Solved Need AOL help: upgraded from IE7 to IE9, but useragentstring shows IE7

[derekimo]

Is there a misunderstanding here?

When you talk about AOL, are you referring to the AOL desktop?

AOL Desktop Version 9.7 - Download It Today!

From looking at your screenshots it looks like it is to me.

 

[dsperber]

Is there a misunderstanding here?

When you talk about AOL, are you referring to the AOL desktop?

AOL Desktop Version 9.7 - Download It Today!

From looking at your screenshots it looks like it is to me.

AOL 9.7 is installed on the Windows 7 laptop in Boston, where that particular screenshot was taken to see just what "useragentstring" would be on that machine.

But I upgraded the Vista machine in Florida only to AOL 9.5, because it's "less intrusive" and works fine. Kind of the last "standalone" AOL which is NOT a "desktop", as I understand it. I have several other friends who are long-time AOL users and they won't leave 9.5 even though both are running on Win7.

 

[dsperber]

Using normal ie9,
Click on the Gear symbol on the top right and click on Manage add-ons,
Click on Show All add-ons,
Post a screen shot of the pages on Toolbars and Extensions.

 

[derekimo]

Yeah, I wasn't so much concerned with the version as I was trying to point out that the AOL you are talking about is separate from IE itself.

 

[andrew129260]

Why are you using the AOL software at all? Do you have dialup? It is unnecessary if you have high speed internet. Its complete bloatware to begin with. You can check your email by going to aol.com or using windows live mail or another email program.

Aol software is your issue, so uninstall it. Aol software is completely unnecessary and will slow down your pc.

Use internet explorer or another web browser if you wish.

 

[dsperber]

Why are you using the AOL software at all? Do you have dialup? It is unnecessary if you have high speed internet. Its complete bloatware to begin with. You can check your email by going to aol.com or using windows live mail or another email program.

Of course. All this is true. And in fact when they travel and check into a hotel and use the hotel's "office" computers they check their mail using AOL.COM web mail through whatever browser happens to be on that machine.

But people are creatures of habit, especially long time AOL users. They will never give up that "comfortable feeling" of something familiar, including the cartoony icons, etc. That's what makes them know how to do things and what it should look like. And that's EXACTLY what AOL wanted when they developed this crap.

So... "the customer's always right" (when possible). Hence, I am trying to fix a browsing problem dealing with a web page "viewed in a browser" triggered by a link in an email being read through AOL's "read" email client, all launched within their AOL 9.5 ecosystem.

That's what "the client" grew up always using, and so that's what "the client" wants.

Ever have to deal with WAF?? (she's not mine, but you get the point)

 

[dsperber]

I'm beginning to wonder if I should have upgraded to 9.5 using more of a "clean install" option, rather than "upgrade an existing install on this machine" (which of course made the most sense).

That's how it automatically transferred everything from the 9.1 setup to the new 9.5 setup, with me doing ZERO.

I just wonder now if since the 9.1 setup was on IE7, whether that also got copied into the upgraded 9.5 environment, and whether that would not have happened if I'd taken some kind of a cleaner install option. But I wanted that "organizer" and all settings to be automatically moved to 9.5. You wouldn't think the environment issue of IE7 vs. IE9 would be "fixed", and not automatically upgraded as well if that was the current situation following a MS Windows Update.


I also investigated this particular MS page regarding a very similar issue, where IE9 was always presenting itself as IE7. The "solution" was to DISABLE the presumed checked option to "ALWAYS display Internet pages in compatibility mode".

Well, if that option WAS checked then I could understand the resulting behavior.

But in fact, that option was NOT checked. It was un-checked.

And besides, the "problem Nordstrom page" displays PERFECTLY when using external IE9 on the machine. It's only when running underneath AOL as a browser window that it presents itself as IE7.

So either there's a way for AOL to force IE to run in compatibility mode, or something about the upgrade of AOL from 9.1 (with IE7 at that time) to 9.5 (which now has IE9 running in the Vista machine) is forcing IE9 under AOL to announce as IE7 and compatibility mode. Again, this is what I want to turn off and reset... if anyone here knows what I'm talking about, and how to do it.

Can't believe I'll have to wander off of SevenForums and onto an AOL forum to see if this is a known issue with a solution.

 

[derekimo]

Valid points, whether or not the computer in question is yours. The issue is now clearer and getting rid of AOL software is not an option.

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you but I hope you find one now that things are clearer for those looking at this thread.

 

[dsperber]

Just found this VERY interesting web page on the useragentstring.com web site.

It shows that using AOL 9.5 there is no way IE9 can be presented properly in the "useragentstring" value!!

Apparently, you must be using AOL 9.6 in order to present even IE8 (which is the maximum value possible with AOL 9.6). This is higher than IE7, and may well be acceptable to the Nordstrom site which doesn't support IE7 any longer.

And you must be using AOL 9.7 if you want to present IE9.

Well, she's already used to running with AOL 9.7 on her Windows 7 laptop with IE10, and she's therefore used to it. Interestingly my earlier screenshot from that laptop actually showed IE10, not IE9 which is shown on this page as the so-called highest value which is valid. So maybe this page is a bit out of date.

But if it is the version of AOL itself which is the limiting factor, and 9.6 or higher is required to communicate an IE higher than 7, it's certainly worth a try. Seems like there's nothing to lose. Worst case, no change.

I'll report back after the current 140-item Windows Update (first one after Service Pack 2!) completes. Could be a while.

 

[derekimo]

Good find, hope that fixes it for you.

 

[ThrashZone]

ie9 External,
That is a term I discounted and should asked more about :haha:
People download crap I suppose I shouldn't be surprised anymore but darn it I still am,
aol designed it they will have to fix it,
Cheers.

 

[dsperber]

Well... THAT'S WHY THEY PAY ME THE BIG BUCKS!!!

CASE CLOSED! PROBLEM SOLVED!! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! WE EMERGE VICTORIOUS!!

NO MATCH FOR THE KID.

Persistence pays off. I'm going to take great pride and joy in marking this thread "SOLVED"!


That was it!!! Upgrade to AOL 9.7 instead of stopping at AOL 9.5 is all that it took. Absolutely no other changes to anything anywhere. Exact same IE9, configured exactly as before. Changed NOTHING.

Interestingly, as was previously mentioned AOL 9.7 now identifies itself as a version of Chrome in "useragentstring":

and... proof is in the pudding... here is that problem Nordstrom web page, now perfectly displayed using AOL 9.7 (with no broken links, but true pictures instead):

 

[derekimo]

 

[UsernameIssues]

Hopefully you will not get another call because another website cannot correctly parse that user string from AOL 9.7 desktop. My first exposure to this was because a website saw AOL 9.7 as Chrome 21.

 

[dsperber]

Hopefully you will not get another call because another website cannot correctly parse that user string from AOL 9.7 desktop. My first exposure to this was because a website saw AOL 9.7 as Chrome 21.

Ugghh!

I already have another promised "service call" (i.e. another RealVNC support friend) on a Win7 machine still running AOL 9.5. And all Windows Updates are applied so that IE11 is what's running... with AOL 9.5!

And of course now that I appreciate the consequences here, it's obvious why I'm getting the complaint about a "cousin" of the earlier issue with the Nordstrom site. In this case it's some game site (Scrabble or Canasta or something) which is also complaining about "your browser is no longer supported".

Well, here's what IE11 launched by AOL 9.5 looks like in its "useragentstring":

In contrast, here is the value from an "external" IE11 browser window:

So, this one's due for a similar upgrade from AOL 9.5 to 9.7, and hopefully it will be compatible with IE11 as installed.

I've already run into my own problems with IE11 not being compatible with several mainframe VPN connectivity JAVA apps. There is no current solution, as there's something clearly very different here about what MS did in IE11 relating to JAVA. The only "workaround" is to back off to IE10, which still works fine.

Anyway, this is all very useful and interesting information learned from today's discoveries.

 

[UsernameIssues]

I'll stick to my statement that AOL9.7 is just a wrapper for Chrome 21. Maybe it picks the rendering agent based on the website visited. Below is a screenshot of the cache files from AOL and Chrome. Glancing at them via notepad shows the data structure to be the same.





This is what I looked at several days ago while solving issues in a software specific forum.

I could be wrong about the AOL/Chrome connection. I don't have anyone that I support that still uses AOL - so I'm not interested in digging much deeper. But notice the info presented here: What's A User Agent?



The parenthesis hold info about compatibility.
That info is preceded by the browser ID and version.

For AOL 9.7, there seems to be several browser IDs/versions:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64)
AppleWebKit/537.1 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/21.0.1180.0
AOL/9.7 AOLBuild/4343.2039.US
Safari/537.1

While I'm boring readers about user agent strings, I might as well say that IE11 changed things by no longer including the MSIE info in the compatibility section. This broke lots of websites... but the websites should not have been using the info that way in the first place.

 

[dsperber]

...I might as well say that IE11 changed things by no longer including the MSIE info in the compatibility section. This broke lots of websites.

Yes, you can see that in my screenshot shown in my last post, which is from "external IE11".

That's why I say that while I believe the upgrade from AOL 9.5 to 9.7 is the very least I must do to solve this other friend's issue, it may also be necessary to back out IE11 down to IE10. It's possible that the upgrade to 9.7 is inadequate to support IE11, period, no better than 9.5 but failing in a slightly different way.

Won't know until I see what the actual current site symptom is, and how it responds to the 9.5->9.7 upgrade.

I agree with your assessment that 9.7 does in fact look like Chrome inside.

 

[UsernameIssues]

I don't think that backing out IE11 will help much, but keep us posted.

From here: AOL Desktop Version 9.7 - Download It Today!

It does seem that IE10 is the highest IE that they list.
I'm just not clear of the interaction between AOL and IE.

 

[dsperber]

I don't think that backing out IE11 will help much, but keep us posted.

It does seem that IE10 is the highest IE that they list.
I'm just not clear of the interaction between AOL and IE.

I already know from the actual working Boston Win7 laptop running AOL 9.7 and IE10 that the combination definitely works at least with the Nordstrom site!).

For sure I haven't had a call for help from there... only from Florida with the Vista laptop.

What is unknown at the moment is the nature of the problem site attempting to be accessed in that now known problematic setup of AOL 9.5 and IE11. I'll be interested to see what "external" IE11 does with that same site.

Anyway, I await the promised phone call the next time this pops up on that machine.

Again, many thanks for your insights and experience and very helpful and informative comments on the issues within this thread.

 

[UsernameIssues]

~~~
I already know from the actual working Boston Win7 laptop running AOL 9.7 and IE10 that the combination definitely works at least with the Nordstrom site!).
~~~

Correct, but I think that you will find that it worked solely on the basis of the user agent string. I installed AOL 9.7 on W7/IE8 and the user agent string was the same. I could also visit the Nordstrom website without any problems.

I would just move the other person to AOL 9.7 and leave IE11 as is. If AOL 9.7 is indeed using Chrome 21, then it probably contains the flaw that allows Chrome to be run at the system integrity level. That is a black hat's dream exploit.

According to this: Google Chrome 33.0.1750.58 Beta - History - FileHippo.com

21 is a pretty old version of Chrome.