Agreed, I have only had this problem with links (and I am sure they are xml links). As it turns out, the problem was related to Microsoft Windows XML components for handling XML/XSL:
Free-Threaded XML DOM
XML DOM Document
XML HTTP
I just don't know if it was all client side (I doubt it). I believe this to be a compound problem and here is what I know...
These are add-ons that "run without requiring permission." Most browsers run versions 3 and 4. Service Pack 1 had a problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326860
I am wondering if the latest XML parsers have had the bug patched back in or if it was in fact unresolved? In SQL, this will return the message "document has no data" if the xml parser fails on converting the data stream to XML. If it is a transform failure you will receive the message "XML parser failure." I find it interesting that I am having this problem with my hyper-threaded system.
That said, there is also an internet worm going around - it was just upgraded to Level 3:
http://www.symantec.com/security_respon ... 17-1403-99
It may also have been flooding the internet (AOL has been hit hard and just got their network back up yesterday). AOL and CNN rely on huge farms of cache servers (proxy) to feed content (the XML components fail on cached content). Without these online (due to the spam worm) it could be causing "server stress" for the remaining proxies (see above microsoft article) which would more likely cause this failure. (AOL just finished a major upgrade on their network and got hit during the conversion). On sites that most likely don't have cache farms I never had a problem.
In any case, after reinstalling the XML components (4 and 6) most sites began to run yesterday and this morning everything looks back to normal with the remaining problematic sites.
Just a note: the parsers are system level and therefore will affect all browsers that rely on them. Many browser upgrades are incorporating this functionality into the browser engine so it isn't which browser you have but which version you have.
UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR.3.0.04131.06)