Internet is up but IE is down - how to fix?

  • Thread starter Thread starter noxbox
  • Start date Start date
N

noxbox

My XP system has the internet connectivity. Ping and tracert
work perfectly. No data loss. Newsreader Agent also works fine
as I'm using it right now. But IE doesn't run. It returns the
error page saying:

"The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web
site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may
need to adjust your browser settings."

Sometimes It can load the homepage after a long time. But it
deosn't go beyond that.

I tried Mozilla Firefox. It doesn't work either.

IE on another XP computer on the same home network works fine.
So there couldn't be anything wrong with the network.

My system has Spybot and the free AVG anti-virus installed. I
still suspect some trojan or something vicious did this. How to
fix? What program can fix it?
 
noxbox said:
My XP system has the internet connectivity. Ping and tracert
work perfectly. No data loss. Newsreader Agent also works fine
as I'm using it right now. But IE doesn't run. It returns the
error page saying:

"The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web
site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may
need to adjust your browser settings."

Sometimes It can load the homepage after a long time. But it
deosn't go beyond that.

I tried Mozilla Firefox. It doesn't work either.

IE on another XP computer on the same home network works fine.
So there couldn't be anything wrong with the network.

My system has Spybot and the free AVG anti-virus installed. I
still suspect some trojan or something vicious did this. How to
fix? What program can fix it?
Click to expand...

I just had to reformat my drive. I loaded the new Spybot program with it's
real time protection. My homepage is on Excite.com. It said Excite.com was a
bad site and wouldn't let me access it. I couldn't figure out how to make it
let me see the page so I just deleted Spybot. My homepage on Excite works
fine now.
 
noxbox said:
My XP system has the internet connectivity. Ping and tracert
work perfectly. No data loss. Newsreader Agent also works fine
as I'm using it right now. But IE doesn't run. It returns the
error page saying:

"The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web
site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may
need to adjust your browser settings."

Sometimes It can load the homepage after a long time. But it
deosn't go beyond that.

I tried Mozilla Firefox. It doesn't work either.

IE on another XP computer on the same home network works fine.
So there couldn't be anything wrong with the network.

My system has Spybot and the free AVG anti-virus installed. I
still suspect some trojan or something vicious did this. How to
fix? What program can fix it?
Click to expand...

Internet services use "ports". Maybe there is a firewall doing this,
set to block port 80 outgoing ? But if the blockage is intermittent, then
it could be malware of some sort. NNTP is port 119 according to
this.

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

Paul
 
Paul said:
Internet services use "ports". Maybe there is a firewall doing this,
set to block port 80 outgoing ? But if the blockage is intermittent, then
it could be malware of some sort. NNTP is port 119 according to
this.

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

Paul
Click to expand...

Browsers can also use web proxies, but I don't know how or where you
set that up in the browser. At one time, we used to manually configure
proxy settings, but I think there is also some automated protocol for it.

In Firefox, you can type "about:config" in the URL box, to see all
the settings that Firefox is using. In the "Filter" box, you could
type "proxy" and look for something suspicious.

Another tool you can use, is Wireshark (formerly caller Ethereal).
It will trace packets going to an Ethernet interface, so you can see
what is being sent and received. Some malware is savvy enough, to
adjust behavior when Wireshark is running, so no guarantees. I use
Wireshark, any time I see suspicious activity when the computer is
idle etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireshark
http://www.wireshark.org/about.html

When Wireshark is running, you can set View:Name_Resolution:Network_Layer
to ON, and that will convert numeric IP addresses into symbolic ones. It
may be disabled by default, to avoid any mechanisms where a mistranslation
was going on.

To capture, you use Capture:Interfaces and click "Start" on the interface
that is carrying the traffic.

A basic program that fetches a file over port 80, would be something
like GNU wget. It is actually a command line program, but the executable
is sometimes shipped as part of other packages. I would experiment with
something like that, as another "browser" and see what happens. The copy
I got, came with http://winwget.sourceforge.net/ . I don't use the
Windows wrapper they built, but when you do the install, there is a
separate "wget" folder, which has the GNU stuff in it. In a DOS
window, you can type "wget.exe --help" and see the options. An annoying
"manual" window will pop up, but you also see the options for the program
listed in the DOS window. Wget has a number of options, but I would expect
wget <URL> would fetch a basic file from a web site.

http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.txt

Example command - this put a copy of the "port-numbers" text file, into the
wget directory on my C drive (because I CD'ed there, before running wget).

wget http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

Paul
 
Thanks for your detailed reply. But I'm technically savvy. That
seems very technical to me and will need me sit down for hours to
install it, set it up, tweak, and monitor.

Can something like Norton Internet Suite or Mcafee Internet Suite
be able to find the problem and fix it if it's some malware?
 
My XP system has the internet connectivity. Ping and tracert
work perfectly. No data loss. Newsreader Agent also works fine
as I'm using it right now. But IE doesn't run. It returns the
error page saying:

"The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web
site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may
need to adjust your browser settings."

Sometimes It can load the homepage after a long time. But it
deosn't go beyond that.

I tried Mozilla Firefox. It doesn't work either.

IE on another XP computer on the same home network works fine.
So there couldn't be anything wrong with the network.

My system has Spybot and the free AVG anti-virus installed. I
still suspect some trojan or something vicious did this. How to
fix? What program can fix it?
Click to expand...

Try using FireFox instead of IE
 
noxbox said:
My XP system has the internet connectivity. Ping and tracert work
perfectly. No data loss. Newsreader Agent also works fine as I'm
using it right now. But IE doesn't run. It returns the error page
saying:

"The page cannot be displayed The page you are looking for is
currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing
technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser
settings."

Sometimes It can load the homepage after a long time.
Click to expand...

Sometimes? That's impressive.

You need to doublecheck to see if it in fact loads your homepage. If
it's true, that is your biggest clue IMO.

Does it reload your homepage after pressing the refresh button and
waiting a long time?
But it deosn't go beyond that.
Click to expand...

Given your prior statement as fact, the question is "what's the
difference between your home page and any other webpage", or "how is
your home page loaded differently than any other webpage".

The slowness is a problem too, but you need to key on whether
it in fact loads your homepage.
I tried Mozilla Firefox. It doesn't work either.

IE on another XP computer on the same home network works fine. So
there couldn't be anything wrong with the network.
Click to expand...

Maybe it isn't the network alone but it could be the way the network
interacts with the problem computer.
My system has Spybot and the free AVG anti-virus installed. I
still suspect some trojan or something vicious did this. How to
fix? What program can fix it?
Click to expand...

Sometimes troubleshooting requires simplification. Could be that
those programs are complicating things. If you can't do anything
major like a reinstallation of Windows to help troubleshoot the
problem, consider asking in one of the huge Windows groups.

By the way. Looking at your reply to Paul, the discussion is easier
to follow if you post in context instead of top posting, especially
when asking for technical help.

Good luck.













Path: newssvr12.news.prodigy.net!newsdbm05.news.prodigy.net!newsdst01.news.prodigy.net!prodigy.com!newscon04.news.prodigy.net!prodigy.net!newshub.sdsu.edu!news.astraweb.com!border2.newsrouter.astraweb.com!not-for-mail
From: noxbox <noxbox msn.com>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: Internet is up but IE is down - how to fix?
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:06:31 -0500
X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <47c633bd$0$25388$c3e8da3 news.astraweb.com>
Organization: Unlimited download news at news.astraweb.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: d423885c.news.astraweb.com
X-Trace: DXC=f\PWW:]1A7H5\iVS6:P;:IL?0kYOcDh J\\[6jab8OmLnnkn01fR=7J94df :=:n\KkHI\ BRmIIG89kO7AlGj_B
Xref: prodigy.net alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:503262
[/QUOTE]
Click to expand...
 
noxbox said:
My XP system has the internet connectivity. Ping and tracert
work perfectly. No data loss. Newsreader Agent also works fine
as I'm using it right now. But IE doesn't run. It returns the
error page saying:

"The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web
site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may
need to adjust your browser settings."

Sometimes It can load the homepage after a long time. But it
deosn't go beyond that.

I tried Mozilla Firefox. It doesn't work either.

IE on another XP computer on the same home network works fine.
So there couldn't be anything wrong with the network.

My system has Spybot and the free AVG anti-virus installed. I
still suspect some trojan or something vicious did this. How to
fix? What program can fix it?
Click to expand...
One thing you might try to see if it is a network problem would be to
disconnect the other machines from the network and connect only this
machine. If it works that way then there is something wrong with the
networks setup. If it doesn't work then you know it is the machine and
not the network but since you can connect to newsgroups, the problem has
to do with the IE setup.
 
Back
Top