I'm having a strange software problem tonight. When I tried to open several blogs, including Volokh, Instapundit, and Althouse, I got an error message that Internet Explorer was unable to load the page. When I tried loading the same pages from caches after Google searches, most of these wouldn't load either. Strangely, I was able to visit many other sites on the internet, including new ones I had never visited before.

I tried several things that didn't work:

1. Rebooted

2. Installed and ran Spybot

3. Downloaded IE 7 and rebooted.

4. Cleaned out temp files and history in IE 7.

5. Added Volokh.com to trusted sites in IE 7.

The only thing that works is to use Firefox. I was able to visit all 3 blogs with no problem, and I am using Firefox to post this.

Is anyone else having the same problem? I note that some other blogs were having problems earlier today, but these seemed related to Blogger.

Does anyone know what's going on with Internet Explorer and some blogs? Or is it just me?

UPDATE: Searching on the web, it appears that others are having the same problem. The suggested solution seems drastic, even if I knew how to do it: remove Sitemeter.

2D UPDATE: Sitemeter has been removed. Problem solved, at least for now.

Sitemeter appears to be fixed. Blogs should now be working in Internet Explorer.

[UPDATE: Well, it's no longer preventing the loading of blogs, but getting Sitemeter stats doesn't seem to be working when I click on the Sitemeter icon at the bottom of our page or of Althouse's.]

I received the following email in response to a technical support notice I sent them last night:

Dear Jim,

We apologize for the problem this has caused on your websites. We became aware of a compatibility issue with our SiteMeter tracking code and IE 7 (possibly IE 6) browsers that started last night.

The problem was related to some work we were doing on the backend system for our upcoming website launch.

We've identified and resolved two separate but related issues -

1 - IE Users viewing pages - There was a problem with users who placed their SiteMeter tracking code outside of their HTML Body Tag. Because of the changes we made this created a failure for visitors viewing sites using Internet Explorer 7.

2 - Accessing SiteMeter and Stats - Individuals trying to access or view their SiteMeter stats by clicking on their SiteMeter logo/icons were unable to gain access. This again appears to have affected only individuals using IE7.

At this time both problems have been fixed and our services are fully operational.

If you have any additional questions please let me know.

Sincerely, . . .

SiteMeter Support