Be Excellent To Each Other

When trying to access a web site with a log on prompt (the pop up log on prompt that is part of the browser) I instead get the "webpage cannot be displayed" error.

If I F5 to refresh, the logon prompt box appears straight away. Any ideas as to why this might be?

Https ?

It is a http only page, and has been added to the Local Intranet zone.

Does it work in chrome?

Sadly this is a work related query, and the only browser available is IE8.

Better still, it appears this only happens if you call the site from a batch file eg.

"c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe" http://120.120.120.200/start

Is the user you're logging on to the web page the same as the user you're logged onto the machine with? Could be it's trying to authenticate the logged-on user, failing, and returning an error (though I'd expect a 403), then only prompting you for credentials when you refresh.

I was just thinking that

Are you manually running the batch file, or calling it at startup? If at startup, it'll be launching it in the system context, which won't have any valid credentials for integrated auth to use.

Manually launching the batch file.

I have also tried unchecking the Windows authentication bit in Tools>Internet Options>Advanced, so it doesn't appear to be trying to pass the logged on user to the web site.

Hmmm. Web site's borked? What's the actual HTTP error code it's handing back the first time? 400? 503?

404 from what I can tell. There's no error code present on the error page.
Internet Explorer could not display the webpage.

404 is usually "Webpage could not be found" rather than "Could not display the webpage".

Got any web server logs?

Oh. Ahem.

Only if you can tell me where I might find them

The web server.

A hack workaround might be creating a text file with saving it as 'mything.html' and then changing the batch file to load mything.html rather than going directly to the other page.