Opening networked documents in IE shows blank page

Question

On IE9 this works - but most of our staff aren't using the latest version.

We have a document library page that is pointing to various files in a networked folder.
This folder is accessible by everyone, and they do not have to use log on credentials.

When clicking on the link to the file, it pens a new web page, in which the file will be displayed.
Unfortunately, on IE's below 9, the web page remains blank, and no amount of tinkering (that I've tried) has given us access to is.

The link goes like this: file://intranet/documentation/Sedation%20protocol.doc

This is very urgent; and any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT:
We have moved this shared folder to a new server (From win server 2003 to win serer 2008), which is when th problems started.

Answer 1

Have found a 'solution' to this problemo:

Go to Internet Properties on Control Panel, then Security tab.

On the Local intranet tab,Click on Sites .
While there, untick `Automatically detect intranet network' and tick the remaining 3 boxes.

From there, Click on Trusted sites and untick Enable Protected Mode

That should sort it out.

EDIT: It seems as though some IE's still have a problem, so:
Open IIS7, and create a new virtual folder that links to the physical folder. After that, enable directory browsing on the Virtual Folder.

From there, its simply linking to the document in the Virtual Folder.