Troubleshooting Internet HTML e-mails with images appearing as red Xs

 Notes/Domino Fix List.

Notes requests images that reside on a specific server by using the “perweb” process regardless of the browser setting in the Location Document. This retrieves the images from the Internet. For example, a Yahoo newsletter may have a reference to the following image: .

“Perweb” is the process that retrieves the images (see below for more information).

Having an invalid proxy server can also cause this issue.

Troubleshooting: What to check
The following steps should cover about 90% of red X issues.

1. For general reachability, check to see if Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) can get to the Internet. If you can view the source of the HTML message, then retrieve some of the image references and place them in IE outside Notes to see if the computer can reach the image.

If this is successful, it means the computer itself can reach the images. Now we’ll see if Notes can reach the location.

2. Determine if the missing image is attached to the document as an embedded image or if it is referenced in an image reference file. Right-click the document and choose Document Properties –> Fields tab –> look for “$File”. Check the attributes and see if it is an image file. If the missing image is attached to the message, refer to the following documents:

— Document #1108466, “Internet Messages Arrive with Attachments or Body Parts That Appear Missing or Are Inaccessible.”

— Document #1109097, “Notes client does not render an attachment for users with ‘No Preference’/’Keep in Sender’s Format’ as mail storage preference.”

3. Set the Location Document to use Notes as the default browser and enter the same URL to the image location. As a test, you can enter any website, such as www.yahoo.com. To do this, open the current Location Document (File --> Preferences --> Location Preferences --> Internet Browser panel –> “Internet browser” field set to “Notes”).

In some cases, this should be sufficient. In other cases, this may not work and there may be more red Xs. Check to see if perweb is there and regenerate it if you have to.

4. If Step 3 fails, go back to IE and check the LAN settings to see if there is a proxy enabled. If so, go back to Notes and enter the proxy settings in the Location Document. An incorrect proxy setting such as a bogus location of 127.0.0.1 that has no proxy at all will give red Xs because it doesn’t know where to get the images. After the proxy is set in the Location Document, check the URL again in Notes.

Other troubleshooting steps to try if the previous ones do not work:
These do not have to be done in order.

* Delete perweb.nsf from the NotesData directory and also from any Location Document. Open the Location Document –> Advanced panel –> Web Retriever panel –> Web Navigator database field.

* Clear the cache and temporary Internet files on the browser.

* Copy names.nsf from another workstation that does not exhibit the problem, increasing the TCP/IP timeout in Ports –> User Preferences on the one workstation that fails to load the images.

One set of steps that worked with a proxy server:

1.  In the Location Document –> Basics panel, click the beanie hat next to the Proxy field.

2.  Make sure the option, “Use same proxy for all of the above,” is unchecked.

3.  For e-mails received from the Internet, open the page source of the memo using View –> Show –> Page Source.

— Locate the URL for the missing image and click it or copy/paste it into the address bar.
— If the link can be reached and the image displays, look under the HTML portion of the page source.
— If there are spaces in the URL, this is incorrectly formatted and is the cause of the problem.

The sender or creator of the message should include “%20” if spaces were intended. Notes and IE will add %20 automatically if the URL is accessed directly. Since Notes is trying to render HTML, it looks in the HTML portion, tries to follow the link as typed, and stops at the first space.

SPR# DCHR6TKTKJ was created for this issue (HTML e-mails containing URLs with spaces shown as red boxes) but it was determined not to be a software problem in Notes. Instead, it is an issue with HTML coding on the sender’s part.

The workaround is to view the e-mails in IE or have the sending application comply with Internet standard RFC1738 for URLs.

CASES WITH AUTHENTICATED PROXIES
The following case is only for cases in which authenticated proxies are involved.

Only Notes V6.0 and above support authenticated proxies.

The main point is that Microsoft proxies that use NTLM (Windows domain authentication / Microsoft security’s protocol) is not supported. The protocol is a proprietary protocol (much like NRPC) that Microsoft uses in its suite of products (IE, Outlook, Windows login).

A good indicator that NTLM is enabled is to open IE and get the prompt for authentication in which there are three text fields (username, password, domain). In Notes, despite best efforts and intentions and countless correct login attempts, the red Xs will still be there.

The only workaround for this is to disable NTLM authentication. You cannot put in domainusername for the user name in Notes when the pop-up appears. On a single server machine, this is in the Internet Information Server (IIS) settings in Administrative tools. Make sure that domain authentication is disabled.

In some cases, some proxy servers are set up to drop and reevaluate user logins. This can cause scenarios in which you can initially view the HTML images and then see them change into the red X or red [image] placeholders the next time you open the same e-mail.

An enhancement request for the personal Web Navigator to support NTLM authentication was reported to Quality Engineering as SPR# CPON63XH2A.