Problem Accessing Some Websites

[Agaricus bisporus]

Windows XP Home premium
MS Office

I can access most websites fine but some won't work properly. All used to work fine until I had to strip everything off the disk and relaos=d it due to chronic slowness.
Now my employers intranet will load onto my laptop but hangs up as it loads and I get a message that says "...has stopped working due to a long running script" After a bit it does come together but there are one or two corners of the site I can't get into at all.

I'd never heard of a script - just as MS help hasn't, until I looked at Windows Powershell which says "bla bla cannot be loaded...execution of scrips is disabled...see "get-help about_signing"" which is also unknown to every search I have made.

One messaging website in particular works fine except a page of messages starts as text but this merges into a mess of black further doen the page.

I know - next time I'll get a Mac, but for now?

HELP!!!!

I have a message on

[COCL2]

OK, you're running WIndows XP and you've just reinstalled it.
Have you now installed all the various updates and service packs? You need al three service packs, around 150 other patches, plus the latest version of Internet Explorer.
Those errors suggest to me you only have IE6 or possibly IE7 on that machine You need to upgrade to IE8 - but you need to put the service packs on as a prerequisite to that. IE6 won't work with a lot of modern websites.
Also, make sure you have installed the latest version of Java, and the Adobe Flash player
Finally, what antivirus / security software are you using? Some of those can lack down scripting

[Agaricus bisporus]

Its IE9
Java and Flash loaded - no change.

What the heck is a script - no one seems to know - least of all MS help
What does that bit about signing mean? Again, no help from any internet search.

[green granite]

Check you have Java installed so that scripts can run.

java.com: Java + You (http://www.java.com/en/)

[COCL2]

a script is essentially a mini program that runs within a web page.
It could do something major like enable a database, it may enable forms to be filled in, or it could just be something simple like making the icons flash on/off.
It will almost certainly use Javascript, which is embedded into all modern browsers (and not to be confused with Java itself)
If scripts won't run, its either because they've been turned off in the browser, or the security settings are abnormal, or your security software it overprotective
What antivirus or antimalware software are you using?

[Agaricus bisporus]

COCL, thanks for that.
Using AVG full version.
How/where do you/can you turn scripts off? As I said, searching Windows Help doesn't even reveal the existance of scripts.
Javascript is not Java???!!! Well well, no one has made that distinction before. I'll look into it.
Cheers!

[Milo Minderbinder]

AVG Internet Security?
thats probably the problem. from memory it changes the default security settings in IE to block scripts. You can reset these on the security tab under tools > internet options in IE, but AVG will complain and probably reset them again
You need to change the settings within AVG, but I can't remember where that is - I hate the program, AVAST is better