Google Returning Blank Page

[njl100]

I've just been doing my regular housekeeping on my wife's computer - Toshiba laptop running Vista.

Something strange really happened. It totally locked up so I forced a reboot. It came up ok but when you start IE, Google is just a totally blank page (whole page section of the browser is white, other parts of the browser seem normal - tabs, bar at the bottom etc.). It thinks it has loaded the page (In Progress thingy has stopped, says Google on the tab and "Done" bottom left hand corner). All other pages I've tried (BBC, Amazon, Yahoo) seem to display ok - just Google doesn't (google.co.uk, iGoogle and Google.com).

She has the Google toolbox installed but if I put search criteria in there I get the Google search results normally.

I've done some research - there seems to be a virus which shows a blank page after you've done a search and also about:blank coming up as you home page. This is neither of these things.

I've done a Malwarebytes scan and this shows nothing.

Does anyone have any idea what is happening?

Vista / IE7.

Thanks

[JoeP517]

Have you tried clearing your temporary internet files?

Joe

[njl100]

Thanks Joe

I had just tried that as well as clearing cache, deleting cookies, history, removing Google toolbar and several reboots and that seems to have fixed the problem. Why - I don't know.

Now I have a different but similar problem.

When Google pages (not the home page or search results) display nothing happens. A few examples: after deletion of the Google toolbar I was presented with a page asking why I deleted it - it would not take any input - all controls seemed to be dead. Now I'm trying to reinstall it (getting the latest version from Google) and I am taken to the Google Toolbar EULA Acceptance page. Again neither of the buttons (Accept & Install or Cancel) do anything. They seem to be enabled - change colour when I hover over and give the impression of being pressed but nothing happens.

I've disabled all browser add-ins but still no luck.

Someone on another board has suggested Flash being blocked maybe the cause - but I do not think it is being blocked.

[JoeP517]

I don't remember IE7 - but can you reset IE to defaults in Internet Options | Advanced?

Joe

[njl100]

Strangely, very strangely, the problem has now fixed itself......

I tried downloading the toolbar once more before resetting to defaults and it worked!! Also I've gone into the Tool Bar Options pages (this was just showing white space earlier) and that seems ok.

The half dozen or so reboots must have fixed it.

Thanks for your help.

[JoeP517]

Glad you got it resolved. Strange how thing work sometimes. Thanks for posting back.

Joe