Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Yahoo mail error -2146823279 gExtContent is undefined

In the last couple of weeks I got error messages every time I tried to login to Yahoo! Mail.


Yahoo! Mail experienced a login error:
name:TypeError
message:'gExtContent' is undefined
number:-2146823279
description:'gExtContent' is undefined

Yahoo! Mail experienced a login error:
name:TypeError
message:Object required
number:-2146827864
description:Object required

Yahoo mail error -2146823279 gExtContent is undefined


However, if I clicked "Try again" in the next page, I could access my mail without problem.

Final page, click Try Again


For a while I just ignored these errors, but today they bothered me enough to make me try fixing the problem.

I searched the error message on Internet and I found two recommended solutions:
- clear up the browser history, temporary file cache, cookies, etc., and try again
- switch temporarily to Yahoo Mail Classic (there is link in top of page), then switch back to the new style

While these solutions have worked in the past for me for similar Yahoo errors, today they had no effect.

However, when I read more carefully the last error page, I realized it was talking about a program modifying the html page and about firewall settings blocking ads.

It then hit me I was running an Internet Explorer add-on program, IE7 Pro 2.0 that I use for blocking image-ads and Flash-based ads.

Ad blocking in IE7 Pro can be easily disabled from the context menu (not from firewall settings).

Disable ad blocking in IE7 Pro
As soon as I disabled ad blocking, Yahoo! Mail page opened without problem.

For a permanent solution, I enabled back ad blocking in IE7 Pro, accessed the Yahoo Mail account (got again the errors), and when I got the "Click here to try again" page, I used IE7Pro context menu to select "Ad Blocker / Don't filter this site".