IE refuses to refresh pages

[Tea]

I seem to remember asking this before. But, if I learned it, I forgot the answer already. My IE 5.0 (Win 2K) has stopped refreshing pages except when I explicitly click "refresh". It's set to check on the default "Automatic" setting. I switched it to "every time" just now, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Will just clearing the cache do the trick? Or is there more work required?

[Pradeep]

I had the exact same prob a couple of days ago. The refresh page setting had moved from "every time" back to "auto". Very strange. That was at the time when my firewall was pinged by windows update! Crazy eh? I moved it back to "every" and deleted temp files. Works ok now.

[Onomatopoeic]

Are you all talking about the "Check For Newer Versions Of Stored Pages" settings in Internet Explorer?

[Tea]

Yes Gary. For some reason unknown to me, it seems to be working properly again now. I have no idea why.

[e_dawg]

Sometimes your ISP routes you through a caching server that thinks it's smarter than you are and refuses to refresh said page. So even if IE requests a new page, the caching server will still serve up the old one.

Sometimes they do that by locally configuring your Internet connection to go through a proxy server when they setup your connection at your house/office (so all you will have to do is disable this proxy server redirection in your Internet Settings). Other times it is done at the ISP where everything goes through a caching server like Cisco's Local Director.

[Tea]

Hmmmm ... But would that only do it to Internet Explorer and not to Opera, Moz, and Netscape?

Whatever. It works again now. Anyway, It got me into the habit of mostly using Opera instead, so that was a hidden bonus.

[Handruin]

When I do refreshes with IE, I usually press CTRL + ALT and then click refresh. I believe thi forces a reload.

[e_dawg]

Oh, didn't know that was isolated only to IE.

And yes, Handruin, I think Shift+Refresh tells IE to check for a new version of the page. I assumed Tony would have tried that already.

If IE still doesn't refresh, just go into your Temp Internet Files and delete the offending page.