Internet Explorer 6.0 Service Pack 1 may display a blank Web page after you select Auto-Select encoding

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Symptoms

When you do the following in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1), the browser may display a blank Web page instead of opening the HTML content that is on the Web page:

Click View, point to Encoding, and then click Auto-Select.
Visit a Web page.

Note If the Web page is already cached on your computer, the Web page opens correctly.

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Cause

This issue may occur when all the following conditions are true:

The Web page is sent by using HTTP compression.
The Web page contains a Pragma no-cache directive.
The Web page is accessed by using HTTPS.
The Web page contains an extended character, such as an umlaut or a character that has an accent.
The Web page size is larger than 4 kilobytes (KB).

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Workaround

To work around this issue, use one or more of the following methods.

Method 1: Specify the character set

To work around this issue on the Web server side, explicitly specify the character set encoding in the HTML page. To do this, add the following Meta tag to the top of the Web page:

<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

Method 2: Remove the Pragma no-cache command

To work around this issue on the Web server side, remove the Pragma no-cache command from the Web page header. To do this, remove the command similar to the following from the top of the Web page:

<% Response.AddHeader "Pragma", "no-cache" %>

Method 3: Clear the HTTP 1.1 settings

To work around this issue on the client side, clear the HTTP 1.1 settings. To do this, follow these steps:

In Internet Explorer 6 SP1, click Tools, and then click Internet Options.
Click the Advanced tab.
Click to clear the following check boxes:
- Use HTTP 1.1
- Use HTTP 1.1 through proxy connections

Method 4: Turn off Auto-Select

To work around this issue on the client side, turn off Auto-Select. To do this, follow these steps:

In Internet Explorer 6 SP1, click View.
Point to Encoding, and then click Auto-Select.

Note When Auto-Select is turned off, the check mark does not appear next to Auto-Select.

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More information

For more information about the Auto-Select feature in Internet Explorer 6.0, click Help, click Contents and Index, click the Index tab, type auto-select, and then click Display.

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