IE cannot display the webpage for Gateway URI on SSL enabled Cognos machine

[bbrooksux]

We're testing out the 3rd party SSL functionality with Cognos and so far everything has gone OK. We are still seeing a few weird things that I'm hoping I can get some answers to here on the forum. After going through the steps outlined here and then securing our IIS web server via SSL, we can hit the https://machinename/cognos8 link from a browser and it pulls up fine.
Issue #1: We found that when trying to hit the actual Gateway URI link (https://machinename:80/cognos8/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi) IE8 will spin for a couple of minutes and finally respond that Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage. If you remove the :80 from the URI, it pulls up the security message and proceeds into Cognos.
Issue #2: This instance of Cognos is currently installed on an XP machine. When other users on other Windows machines (XP through Windows 7) try to access the https://machinename/cognos8 link, they can access with no problem. However when they try to hit the secured dispatch link (https://machinename:9300/p2pd/servlet/dispatch) which we need for our OEM application, users on Windows XP and 2003 machines can access the dispatch link, but those on Windows 2008 or Windows 7 cannot. They receive a similar IE cannot display the webpage error.

All link testing has been done on IE8 on all Windows environments. The web server used in this scenario is IIS 5.1 and the 3rd party certificates are created with OpenSSL for testing purposes. Let me know if anyone has ideas on what to look for as I'm fairly new to SSL!

[SomeClown]

Here's a couple of guesses at something to try:

If you haven't already, you may want to check the Windows Firewall settings for Win7/Win2k8 clients - changed enough from XP/2003 that's it has caused me problems.  (personally, I end up turning it off - seems to break more stuff than it helps - if needed, I pop a third party firewall on the client machine)

Also, try using the FQDN in the client machine call (machinename.domain.com:9300) - not sure if DNS suffixing works the same in newer OS

Hope this helps.  Let us know what you find.