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**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 20, 2007, 1:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/500-html-not-being-returned-to-ie/92500 "2007-04-20T01:45:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@dmarkow](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dmarkow)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 1:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/500-html-not-being-returned-to-ie/92500/1 "2007-04-20T01:45:29Z")
When I access a “broken” page on my site, most browsers display my
500.html file found in the RAILS\_ROOT/public folder. However, Internet
Explorer always shows its own default “The page cannot be displayed”
error rather than showing the custom page I made. It works fine in
Firefox, Safari, etc. Any suggestions?
I’m running rails 1.2.3 on mongrel+apache2.2.
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**Author:**  [@dmarkow](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dmarkow)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 2:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/500-html-not-being-returned-to-ie/92500/2 "2007-04-20T02:47:21Z")
> When I access a “broken” page on my site, most browsers display my
> 500.html file found in the RAILS\_ROOT/public folder. However, Internet
> Explorer always shows its own default “The page cannot be displayed”
> error rather than showing the custom page I made. It works fine in
> Firefox, Safari, etc. Any suggestions?
>
> I’m running rails 1.2.3 on mongrel+apache2.2.
How big is your 500.html page (in bytes)? I seem to recall that IE will
show it’s own error page if the custom page isn’t big enough… and I
remember that just adding a bunch of blank spaces would do the trick.
Don’t remember how big it has to be though, but I don’t think it was
much.
-philip
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**Author:**  [@dmarkow](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dmarkow)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 3:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/500-html-not-being-returned-to-ie/92500/3 "2007-04-20T03:05:43Z")
409 bytes. I’ll try to pad it and see what happens. Thanks!
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**Author:**  [@dmarkow](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dmarkow)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 6:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/500-html-not-being-returned-to-ie/92500/4 "2007-04-20T06:06:41Z")
Looks like internet explorer ignores any custom error pages which are
less than 512 bytes. Thanks!!