SOLVING your Google Infinite Loop

You try to login to your Google Sites domain and all hell breaks loose on IE. You can login just fine from other browsers like FireFox. When Chrome is working (not crashing) you can login with that browser too. But IE goes nuts!

It loops over and over fast an furiously between your site and some jotspot URL. What’s it doing?

You search for all the keywords that you can think of to find an answer:

Google Apps infinite loop
Google Apps redirect loop
Cannot login to Google Apps
Infinite loop opening Google Docs
IE Status bar shows redirecting in an infinite loop

Yes,  it is an infinite re-direct loop which Google Apps users are very familiar with.

Well, there are several things that cause this and eventually you need to fix them all.

1. Cookies

Of course, you can clear your cache and get rid of cookies, but most of the time that’s not the problem.

Well, the clever programmers at Google must not give a shit about error conditions, because when they cannot write a cookie they just keep trying over and over,  like banging a head against a wall. The trouble is, it’s your head they are banging.

Later, you may have found that one of the many upgrades at Microsoft has turned off cookies on Internet Explorer. Google assumes a perfect world. Perhaps they never learned TRY and CATCH in school, or learned to check an error code.

Fix #1: You want to change the privacy settings to accommodate Google Sites:
IE > Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Advanced > Override the defaults and accept cookies.

2. Protected Mode

Fix #2 You want to change the security settings to accommodate Google Sites:
IE > Tools > Internet Options > Security > Internet > (check) Enable Protected Mode (and Apply)
repeat for Trusted Sites > (check) Enable Protected Mode (and Apply)
heck, might as well repeat for Local Intranet > (check) Enable Protected Mode (and Apply)

Personally, I also dive in and set Custom Level (scrolling to the bottom) User Authentication > (select) automatic logon with current username and password.

By now, you should be good-to-go.  However, along the way to these key fixes, I encountered tips from other users:

3.  Gears

The best post that I read talked about the problems with Google Gears.  In the old days, you installed it separately from Chrome.   Uninstalling it has been demonstrated to solve various problems for people.  However, gears is an embedded component of the newer releases of Chrome.  Removing Chrome has not been shown to solve this problem.  Fix #3 – remove Gears.