Becca72 -

Suggestions we've made previously are what usually works, but are based on some assumptions about your setup. Everything thus far has been what should work on any recent machines with common OS versions and other common software. The few remaining "possibles" mostly are very much dependent on the exact details of your individual machines and how they're set up. Trying to troubleshoot "long distance" could require more tedious testing and reporting back and forth than I suspect you'd (or we'd) wish to try to do.

Since the problem does appear on your machine at work, if you have any kind of "tech support" there I'd strongly suggest that you contact them, since they should know the details of the system you have there. (Unless, of course, your mudcat contact is "surreptitious" and you can't let them to know about it?) Unless your office support people are unusually unfriendly (or maybe just typically overloaded) they should be willing to give you at least an outline of what problems they might find for use on your home machine.

While I don't find any reports of the identical error message you're getting, there are several "suggestive" articles about similar problems at Microsoft support. Most of the "most likely" candidates are rare and do require testing to find and verify, and relatively complex procedures to fix. Most are also very much dependent on the particular machine and software setup, and using an inappropriate one could cause other problems.

Probably the #1 cause for problems similar to what you're getting come from "third party programs" and most frequently from things like toolbars. Any new toolbar, or an update to an existing one would be suspect. (Add on utilities to "do better" the things that Windows is already equipped to do are frequent culprits.) Most such accessories can be "uninstalled" (temporarily?) to see if the problem goes away. Quite a few of the appropriate diagnostics require Safe Boot or Clean Boot procedures.

Possibly second in line would be AntiVirus programs. Some AV programs, some firewalls, and a few other anti-malware programs "lock" the Temporary Internet Files and Cookies during scan, and occasionally may fail to "unlock" them. Their "quarantine" function sometimes locks individual files but leaves them on the drive. This may prevent the "delete files" functions in IE from removing them, so a corrupt cookie could remain "readable" but would be seen as corrupt when the site tries to "refresh" (edit) the cookie. (Each cookie normally records the most recent access date and time, which requires an "edit" at each opening of the site.) A recent update may have changed settings in your AV or firewall, especially suspect if both your machines use the same programs. Most such programs can be told to "not lock" the Temporary Internet folder files, but it often takes some major digging about in the AV program instructions to find where to do it, and different programs use different nomenclatures to describe what you need.

Rarely, errors similar to what you see may be caused by a corruption of the "user identity" folder in Windows. It's difficult to see how two machines could become corrupt in the same way at the same time (except possibly by a malware infection). The solution here is to create a new user, copy the old user folder data to the new user account folder, change the user name in the new folder, and then delete the old user. In some cases, deletion of specific individual files in the folder may be needed as part of the process. The procedure isn't complex, but requires a fairly specific series of steps and "administrator" privileges you probably don't have at the work machine. Doing steps in the wrong order, or with the wrong login (user vs administrator) for a specific step, can cause bigger problems than you have now.

If you can think of any new clues, don't hesitate to post them here; but with what's known at this point someone who can "lay hands on" one or the other of your computers is probably your best bet.

John