My grandma is having some trouble with Java in her IE8. She went to www.jigzone.com to do some puzzles (Its a fun website) and the puzzles would not load. She recieved two error messages the first one was this:

Oops,the puzzle has failed to start in a reasonable time.
This could happen if your are no longer connected to the internet or your computer has problems displaying Java applets.

The second one:
The JigZone Jigsaw Puzzle is free and requires no extra upgrades to a modern computer.
However, if your computer is old, your browser has certain features disabled, or you have a firewall on your internet connection, these could prevent the puzzle working correctly.

She has already went through all the troubleshooting steps and everything else. Does anyone have an idea of what is wrong here?

Try to see if the problem is the same on other modern browsers, like Chrome, Firefox or Opera. It'll help figure out if it's the IE 8 or the Java causing the problem.

She has firefox and IE8, But she is using IE8.

...

Does it happen in firefox as well? If it does, it's a Java problem; if it does not, it's an IE problem.

Turn off/on compatibility mode. If nothing changes, it's a java issue.