Unable to find a clickable link on Adsense

After I ran Argente Utilities to try to clean up my computer a bit, I noticed that I was getting occassional errors when browsing with Internet Explorer, but not with Firefox or Chrome.  The specific error was “An Add-On For this Website Failed to Run” and I noticed that some of the adsense ads weren’t loading properly.  Some banner ads were just blank rectangles and the link ads were plain black text and could not be clicked.

I first assumed that something was corrupted with Internet Explorer.  I tried to re-install it and found that in Windows 7 this seems to be nearly impossible.  Even with browsing the web, I couldn’t find a good way to do this.  The closest was to go into Settings – Add/Remove Programs – and on the left there is an option to remove Windows components.  I selected the checkbox to uninstall Internet Explorer 9 and it seemed to do it’s thing.  When I then went to try to reinstall it, I got an error message that I already had the most recent version installed.  I then re-installed it via the Add/Remove Programs panel, but I still had the same error.  Yuck.

I then thought maybe my Flash player got corrupted.  I uninstalled and reinstalled Flash.  Still no luck.  And the Flash player seemed to work fine on other websites.

For a few days, I was just resigned to the fact that maybe internet explorer would remain corrupted until a newer version comes out.  I was going to install the newest beta version of explorer, only to find out that it is bundled with the new windows 8 operating system.  I am not ready to try a beta release of an operating system, especially since it would likely mean I’d have to buy it in order to keep using it once it is out of beta.  And who knows what programs and drivers will be compatible with Windows 8.

Aggravated again this morning, I decided to try one more search.  This time, I finally found a thread with some new information.  It turns out that Doubleclick was added to the restricted sites list in Internet Explorer.  In order to remove it fromt he restricted sites list, you go to settings, internet options, security tab, and then in the top box select “restricted sites”.  It took a while to scroll through the list and find *.doubleclick.com but after I removed it from the restricted sites list, everything is back to working fine.

I’m not sure why Argente Utilities considers that a site that should be restricted, but I maybe they figure most people want ads blocked.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t just block ads, but actually causes an error as well.

I’m glad I got it figured out as it was really annoying.