A
Alan Meyer
My wife's computer is running Windows Vista. The system works fine for
almost all purposes. It accesses the Internet successfully through a
wireless network card to our home WiFi router. The WiFi connection is
fine with a high signal strength. It's connecting to an old DLink
802.11b router using WEP encryption, which is all the router supports.
Periodically, on average every few days, she will lose HTTP
connectivity. This happens in both IE7 and Firefox 3.08. She can still
send and receive email and still use a web browser via HTTPS, but she
cannot connect to ordinary web pages on port 80. The problem normally
persists until she reboots, at which time connectivity is restored.
Two other computers on my home network (one Linux, one XP) are
unaffected. They work fine through the same wireless network while my
wife's Vista computer is not connecting.
It seems as if Vista or some installed piece of software is setting up a
proxy server that is intercepting attempts to initiate connection on
port 80 but, so far, I haven't found anything doing that. If, in
Internet Explorer, I click Tools, Internet Options, Connections, LAN
settings, the "Use a proxy server ..." box is unchecked. I have tried
checking it and then unchecking it, but that has no effect.
I have been running some software on her machine that could be causing
the problem. I was running the free versions of Spybot, Zonealarm and
AVG antivirus. None of them appear to be claiming to run proxy servers
when I read their help information.
I uninstalled Spybot with no effect.
I cannot find any controls in AVG Free that will allow me to tweak it,
and it appears that I cannot disable it without a complete uninstall -
which I'm loathe to do.
I tried tweaking various levels of "Program Control" in Zonealarm from
"High" to "Off". There was an effect of sorts. At "High", when I
attempt to connect to a web page it times out. At lower settings, a
connection attempt returns within a second or a few seconds telling me
that it could not connect. As with a lot of this kind of software
however, I can't seem to get it out of memory except by uninstalling it,
which I am also loathe to do - but I don't really think that has
anything to do with my problem. Neither Zonealarm nor AVG can be killed
with Task Manager, even when running as administrator.
The reason I'm loathe to uninstall the virus checker or firewall is that
my wife is a very unsophisticated computer user and I worry that she
needs all the protection she can get. We do have a firewall in the
router which will protect against hacking in, but nothing else. In
order to determine if Zonealarm or AVG is the problem I'd have to run
successfully for about two weeks without them - which is the longest we
have had the connection working.
Following a clue on the net, I tried creating a registry setting at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID}
(see: http://www.catonett.com/blog/archives/194)
but it didn't help.
One more clue is that task manager currently reports that both IExplore
and Firefox are running, even though I have closed them and their
windows are gone. The processes appear to be zombies. The cannot be
killed in task manager, even when running taskmgr as administrator. I
don't know if this happens every time because I haven't checked it
before.
My next step is to uninstall Zonealarm and, if that fails, uninstall
AVG - which really scares me. But before I do that, I'm hoping someone
can give me either some better ideas, or some information to indicate
that one of those really is the problem.
Thank you very much for any solutions, info, clues, or just wild ass
guesses.
Alan
almost all purposes. It accesses the Internet successfully through a
wireless network card to our home WiFi router. The WiFi connection is
fine with a high signal strength. It's connecting to an old DLink
802.11b router using WEP encryption, which is all the router supports.
Periodically, on average every few days, she will lose HTTP
connectivity. This happens in both IE7 and Firefox 3.08. She can still
send and receive email and still use a web browser via HTTPS, but she
cannot connect to ordinary web pages on port 80. The problem normally
persists until she reboots, at which time connectivity is restored.
Two other computers on my home network (one Linux, one XP) are
unaffected. They work fine through the same wireless network while my
wife's Vista computer is not connecting.
It seems as if Vista or some installed piece of software is setting up a
proxy server that is intercepting attempts to initiate connection on
port 80 but, so far, I haven't found anything doing that. If, in
Internet Explorer, I click Tools, Internet Options, Connections, LAN
settings, the "Use a proxy server ..." box is unchecked. I have tried
checking it and then unchecking it, but that has no effect.
I have been running some software on her machine that could be causing
the problem. I was running the free versions of Spybot, Zonealarm and
AVG antivirus. None of them appear to be claiming to run proxy servers
when I read their help information.
I uninstalled Spybot with no effect.
I cannot find any controls in AVG Free that will allow me to tweak it,
and it appears that I cannot disable it without a complete uninstall -
which I'm loathe to do.
I tried tweaking various levels of "Program Control" in Zonealarm from
"High" to "Off". There was an effect of sorts. At "High", when I
attempt to connect to a web page it times out. At lower settings, a
connection attempt returns within a second or a few seconds telling me
that it could not connect. As with a lot of this kind of software
however, I can't seem to get it out of memory except by uninstalling it,
which I am also loathe to do - but I don't really think that has
anything to do with my problem. Neither Zonealarm nor AVG can be killed
with Task Manager, even when running as administrator.
The reason I'm loathe to uninstall the virus checker or firewall is that
my wife is a very unsophisticated computer user and I worry that she
needs all the protection she can get. We do have a firewall in the
router which will protect against hacking in, but nothing else. In
order to determine if Zonealarm or AVG is the problem I'd have to run
successfully for about two weeks without them - which is the longest we
have had the connection working.
Following a clue on the net, I tried creating a registry setting at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID}
(see: http://www.catonett.com/blog/archives/194)
but it didn't help.
One more clue is that task manager currently reports that both IExplore
and Firefox are running, even though I have closed them and their
windows are gone. The processes appear to be zombies. The cannot be
killed in task manager, even when running taskmgr as administrator. I
don't know if this happens every time because I haven't checked it
before.
My next step is to uninstall Zonealarm and, if that fails, uninstall
AVG - which really scares me. But before I do that, I'm hoping someone
can give me either some better ideas, or some information to indicate
that one of those really is the problem.
Thank you very much for any solutions, info, clues, or just wild ass
guesses.
Alan
