IE/Windows Cannot access internet, firefox can

636 Views 7 Replies 4 Participants Last post by cougar62, Mar 19, 2009

cougar62

Discussion Starter · Mar 19, 2009

Ok, the title is pretty self explanatory, a friend of mine asked me to work on his old laptop to get it working again. I figured ok, shouldnt be that bad, but ive hit a bit of a stump. either that or it could be the stream of Vicodin ive been on for 2-1/2 months.

Anyways, I booted the laptop up fine (windows xp), and started with windows update. As soon as i loaded IE 7, i got "Internet explorer cannot display the webpage". I checked the wireless, which was working, and i also plugged in an ethernet cable too, to make sure, which didnt work either.
I loaded up the command prompt, and pinged google to see if it was a dns problem, and the ping worked fine, on various sites. I then loaded up Firefox, which worked perfectly.
Ive run virus scans on it, which all came up clean. I installed SP3, which didnt seem to change anything. I also installed IE8 RC1 to check if it was an error with IE, which didnt work either, although i did run the network diagnostic tool with it, and it said a firewall was blocking access. So i went into the windows firewall config and noticed that it was setup to block HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, etc. I re-enabled the protocols and retried IE, still didn't work. I even disabled the firewall/service altogether, which didn't work. Im running out of ideas here, i could use some help.

Heres the system:
Dell inspiron 600m
1.6GHz Pentium M
512MB Ram
XP Home SP3

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waverider599

· #2 · Mar 19, 2009

Lol why do you need to use IE

? That is strange though. Perhaps try updating to a newer version of IE.

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cougar62

Discussion Starter · #3 · Mar 19, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by waverider599

Lol why do you need to use IE

? That is strange though. Perhaps try updating to a newer version of IE.

....If you had read the post, you would have seen that i am trying to use windows update, and my friend's mom only uses IE. Also, I DID update to IE8.

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waverider599

· #4 · Mar 19, 2009

Lol my bad. Did you try removing IE totally and a fresh install of it? Also cant you just update automatically w/o IE?

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cougar62

Discussion Starter · #5 · Mar 19, 2009

Not in Windows XP, you need IE to be able to run windows update.
And its not just IE, its regular programs that cant too i think, like antivirus programs cant update as well.

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-iceblade^

· #6 · Mar 19, 2009

tried going into settings - connections and checking everything is there and the way it should be? sometimes the proxy etc needs to be set in there...

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twitch101

· #7 · Mar 19, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by cougar62

Not in Windows XP, you need IE to be able to run windows update.
And its not just IE, its regular programs that cant too i think, like antivirus programs cant update as well.

hehe windows up date only in IE? look for the fire fox addon IE tab.

it allows you to run windows update in firefox

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cougar62

Discussion Starter · #8 · Mar 19, 2009

ok, thanks for the help, i figured it out. I had been disabling the proxy option in IE but for some reason every time i loaded it up it would revert back to trying to use a proxy. Anyways, it seems to be fixed now.

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