The last couple of days I keep having this odd internet access question–didn’t see anything in the sticky above, so I thought I would throw it out to the computer folks out there to help me solve this.
Okay I do have internet access, I can use Netscape and access most sites–but it won’t let me go to some sites (ie. yahoo and microsoft for example). With IE however I can’t access ANY sites right now. This also happened yesterday and resolved itself–but it is very odd to me.
I am connected to the internet with a cable modem, and am running windows XP and run Spybot, adaware, Zone alarm, etc. I have NOT had any spyeware issues that I know of- and system scans don’t show anything. System seems to run fine–Netscape runs fine.
I do know when I do a system repair on my cable connection I get the following message:
the following steps of the repair operation failed: Flushing the ARP cache.
But I don’t know what that means, or if that is even relevant to the issue here.
any thoughts? I thought about getting a newer version of IE, but I can’t access the site using Netscape for some reason–it can’t find Microsoft.
thanks
Hakuna Matata
Need more detail:
What actually happens when you try to use IE? Blank screen? Error message? Timeout? Crash?
I believe this is because MS have nobbled their site so that it won’t load properly in some browsers by detecting the browser type and serving up erroneously-coded pages in some cases (or at least I seem to remember Netscape claiming something like this)
Well what happens is that when you click the browser it just sits there like it is trying to load and then you get the ‘cannot find server’ IE page. I believe it is called their Cannot find server or DNS error.
And then when I try to hit any other site in my favorites I get the same message, but instantly–no hesitation.
What is odd is that this did the same thing yesterday and it finally resolved itself—I did disconnect and reconnect the modem, but I really don’t think that had anything to do with it since I have internet connection. I can use Netscape and I got my updates for my McFee Live update and have email access.
very odd issue. I think it has to do with some issue in IE but I can’t figure out what it would be.
You mentioned spyware checkers, but not antivirus; have you checked for worms and viruses?
well I am running Norton Antivirus and I just did a check and it says I am up to date.
Is there a way to find out if I have a virus or a worm? BTW–what is a worm?
I did try and go to the pages listed in the sticky–but they weren’t working. Again I am sure it was because I was accessing them using Netscape and not IE. I have found that a great many sites won’t work with Netscape.
thanks for you advice though. I am working from home today and although I can use Netscape I would prefer to use IE.
Norton should have caught it, but you might like to try a visit to Panda Activescan and/or Trend Housecall just in case something has slipped by it.
Thanks Mangetout for your advice. Did the scans and nothing–bur worth a try. Also wanted to apologize–you had helped me once a month or so ago with a computer issue and I never came back and thanked you. Your advice was right on and I simply didn’t follow through with my thanks! You’re a good man Mangetout! 
I also downloaded Opera and Foxfire and may try those as browsers too. I have read a lot of these threads about the spyeware issues and it seems that is a good choice to circumvent the issues involved.
The odd thing is that IE is NOW working–haven’t done a thing, except download those two browsers–hadn’t even run the scans (in fact I wasn’t able to even access the sites until IE opened up–I couldn’t get to them with Netscape. So IE is working again but I don’t have any idea of why it stopped in the first place and thus no guarantee it won’t do it again.
I also tried to download the latest IE version but when I try and install it, I get a prompt that tells me that it has detected a newer version of IE installed on my computer and thus exits. Not sure how I can have a newer version of IE than what I can download off the website (bought this computer last December)–but there you have it.
I think the IE file is corrupt somewhere and so maybe I will try these other two browsers and see what happens.
thanks for you help–and if you or anyone else has some other suggestions I will try them too
Hakuna Matata
follow up to my question is based on this story:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20040615/tc_washpost/a43635_2004jun15
this is exactly what was happening–I couldn’t use my IE, I wonder if my computer is infected like described in this article. I run all the latest stuff–but if it is compromised is there a way to check? When I run the latest virus stuff nothing shows up–but is there a backdoor that they won’t find?
It sounds like maybe a shared library file was screwed up and perhaps one of your alternative browsers brought along its own, intact copy.
Just in case your machine is compromised somehow though, It might just be worth running HijackThis - the program itself doesn’t actually fix anything, but it produces a log that you can scrutinise (and perhaps post here) for signs of malicious processes. Other people here will probably be able to help you more than I can with the log, although I’m gradually getting better at sussing potentially malicious startup items.