The other day I came across a weird problem connecting to an FTP server. Some guys were not able to connect to it using the IE browser while others had no problem at all. Both parties were able to connect via the command prompt. The funny thing is they were all trying with the same login credentials.
The errors seemed to vary depending on the IE settings related to FTP; If the guys who could not connect tried connecting with the setting “Enable folder view for ftp” unchecked, they got a “The page cannot be displayed” error, and when it was checked the error said “An error occurred opening that folder on the FTP Server. Make sure you have permission to access that folder. Details: The operation timed out”
After digging into this a little bit I managed to figure out what the problem was. Then finding this confirmed it. The password that we were trying contained the “@” symbol and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 had problems dealing with it!