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Connected, but browsers not opening web pages

#1 jayfid

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Posted 21 October 2009 - 06:00 AM

Both my browsers (Firefox and IE) have suddenly stopped working and I can't open any web pages with either of them. The messages I get are:

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server
and
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

However, my wireless connection is shown as working, and I can access non-browser things which would require a working connection, such as the iTunes online store, Yahoo messenger.

I have temporarily disabled all my firewalls to see if that was blocking all websites for some reason, but it has made no difference.

Any ideas?

#2 goldhound

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Posted 31 October 2009 - 10:56 PM

View Postjayfid, on Oct 21 2009, 05:00 AM, said:

Both my browsers (Firefox and IE) have suddenly stopped working and I can't open any web pages with either of them. The messages I get are:

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server
and
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

However, my wireless connection is shown as working, and I can access non-browser things which would require a working connection, such as the iTunes online store, Yahoo messenger.

I have temporarily disabled all my firewalls to see if that was blocking all websites for some reason, but it has made no difference.

Any ideas?



What anti virus are you using? There has been a recent problem with Norton internet security 2010 where the latest update of a few days back (which has now been pulled)disables FireFox addons and also causes crashes.
It has affected me also and i have had the same problem as you. There is supposed to be a fix available early this coming week. (ya sure Norton).
The temporary fix is to unistall Norton (checking the box "i intend to install a Norton product later") to hopefully save your settings, then reinstall Norton as the "patch" has been removed.
Hope this helps but i do not know if this is your issue.

#3 Broni

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Posted 31 October 2009 - 11:17 PM

See, if same thing happens in Safe Mode with Networking.
See, if same thing happens, if you're hard-wired.

#4 goldhound

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Posted 31 October 2009 - 11:56 PM

Hi Broni,

Thank you for replying, i hope i am not hijacking this persons post please let me know if you wish me to start a new thread?

Same problem here after i hard wired. I am mostly accessing the web through my google desktop searchbar and occasionally after a restart FireFox will open a desktop icon moments after a pop saying "windows cannot find, be sure you typed etc" comes up but crashes often as does IE.
Wife and i are running identical laptops on the same wireless network both with Vista Home premium 32bt. She has MacAfee and i have NIS 2010, she has no problem. So for me i dunno?
I ran MBAM and SAS, nothing found, i do not think it is a Malware issue but you are the expert.

Wondering if i should look into WINSOCK corruption or TCPIP stack?

Just checked and problem goes away in safe mode :)

#5 Broni

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Posted 01 November 2009 - 09:57 AM

Go Start>Run (Start Search in Vista), type in:
msconfig
Click OK (hit Enter in Vista).

Click on Startup tab.
Click Disable all
IMPORTANT! In case of laptop, make sure, you do NOT disable any keyboard, or touchpad entries.

Click Services tab.
Put checkmark in Hide all Microsoft services
Click Disable all.

Click OK.
Restart computer in Normal Mode.

NOTE. If you use different firewall, than Windows firewall, turn Windows firewall on, just for this test, since your regular firewall won't be running.
If you use Windows firewall, you're fine.

Same problem?

#6 goldhound

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Posted 01 November 2009 - 12:04 PM

Thank you Broni!
I will save this info.
I disabled NIS tamper proof and did a system restore to two weeks back. Totally lost Norton after restore, it would not open so i went to saved downloads and ran Norton setup as admin. It started running as normal then it switched to uninstall, completed, then reinstalled normally but wanted 60 days of updates.

All seems normal now with my system and IE as default browser. Not going to use firefox until i do more snooping :)

Best regards and i hope i am not back for a while.

Edited to add.
I found this article at PCWorld :)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/173858/mozi...fox_plugin.html

#7 Broni

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Posted 01 November 2009 - 12:26 PM

Quote

I found this article at PCWorld

By now, the update was released by Mozilla, but, personally, I blocked it anyway.

I'm glad, things are back to normal :)

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