Did they fix it? Accessing online data

[Masters, Gary E]

We have had some problems with IARC Monographs that we subscribed to.  Some
could access the PDF files and some could not.  The constant solution from
their support desk was to upgrade Acrobat from 4 to 5.  If we had done that,
the next answer of the day was to upgrade IE from 5 to 5.5.  Still we had
machines with Acrobat 4 that were fine and my office workstation had both
Acrobat 5 and IE 5.5 and would not show the monographs.  An earlier step, to
show the list of monographs available, was an Acrobat document.


After some work, I determined two things:

If the advanced security option for IE "Do not save encrypted pages to disk"
was checked, it would not show the monograph.  I tried this solution with
several computers that would not work and as soon as I unchecked that box,
it worked perfectly.  If it were checked again it would not work.  A day
later, we learned that some computers at another site still would not work.
They could be fixed by going to Acrobat (either 4 or 5) and checking the box
in general preferences to have Acrobat work with the browser.  If the first
list of monographs was viewed directly in Acrobat as a stand alone program,
it was not possible to link to the individual monographs.  

So, we patted ourselves on the back for some logic in the face of skeptical
responses from the company and the other library.  We wrote up the solution
and distributed it.  

But, one last point, we checked again our solution and now it is no longer
necessary to uncheck the encrypted page box in the advanced security option
of IE.

My workstation, which had never worked with that box checked, worked
perfectly.

So my question is, did the company  fix it?  We had told them several times.
Or is there another explanation?  Has anyone else had problems with this
database?

Thanks!

Gary


Gary E. Masters
Librarian (Systems)
CDRH - FDA
(301) 827-6893