I’m experiencing a weird computer problem. Whenever I try to access my various email accounts (earthlink, hotmail, yahoo), I get the typical “this page can not be displayed” error messages. I’m able to access just about every other website, though. The problem is in its 3rd day now.What could be the cause of this and how do I fix it?
Do you have a lot of music and video files? Are you downloading music and video files? Sometimes all those files use quite a bit of resources, and it messes up email.***
***This message brought to you by your favorite neighborhood Luddite. Please understand that the technological skill of this Luddite is limited to turning the machine on and off repeatedly for almost all computer related problems. Really complicated computer problems, I drive over it a couple of times, then set the damn thing on fire. Expensive, but oh so satisfying.
I’m pretty sure that’s not it because this problem is not limited to just one computer in my house. I wondering if this could be due to my wireless network settings?
What exactly are you trying to do? Do you type in the URL to your e-mail and get a 404 error? Look on the error page and see if you see a code.
Think back over the last several days. When did this start happening? Did you change anything right before it started happening; or, what were you doing when it started happening?
In this forum, look at the stick Thread entitled “Tech questions:…” That will give you some ideas for the information you might want to provide us. The more we know, the better we can help!
And some initial hints:
If you can’t see any pages, it is usually a network problem. If you can’t see one particular page, it’s usually a server problem. In your case, the problem is unclear. Try this, though: for a page you can see, refresh the page and see what happens.
There are no codes. After I enter in my login info to access my inbox, whether that be for hotmail, yahoo, or earthlink, I get the “internet explorer can not display the webpage” message I get whenever I open the browser and I’m not connected to the internet. But I’m able to access all my other favorites without a problem. This seems only limited to my email websites.
This started happening about 3 days ago. I can’t remember doing anything different, really. I put up a myspace page a week ago, but the problem started a couple days after that.
Does this sound like the symptoms of a virus or worm?
Hard to tell if it’s a virus/worm or not. This sounds like you’re using Internet Explorer 6. As I remember, there is an option in IE6 that may display a code for you. Now bear with me on this, because I am not an IE expert (I use Firefox).
[ol]
[li]In IE6, from the menu select Tools > Internet Options[/li][li]In the Internet Options dialog box, select the Advanced Tab[/li][li]Look for the checkbox option “Show friendly HTTP error messages”.[/li][li]Clear this option (click the checkbox and the checkmark goes away).[/li][li]Click OK at the bottom of the dialog box.[/li][li]Restart IE and try the operation again. You should see an error code.[/li][/ol]
Also, please try to go to a page that you can see, and then do a refresh. To do a refresh, from the menu bar select View > Refresh or press the F5 function key on your keyboard. If the page re-displays OK, then it is probably not your compute r or network.
From what you’ve said so far, I think that you can get to the opening screen of hotmail or Yahoo mail, but you can’t log in. This may mean that you don’t have security enabled properly in IE. To log in to Yahoo!, you use secure HTTP (protocol https). If you have somehow disabled this, the Yahoo server won’t allow you to log in. I would have a hard time determining if this has happened to you.
IE 7
Actually, my earthlink account is the only one that allows me to actually attempt to login. If I put in www.earthlink.net, I’m able to access that page. I only encounter problems when I try to access my inbox.
But my computer plain refuses to recognize yahoo.com or hotmail.com. I just typed in www.hotmail.com in my browser window and I got the message that I’m talking about. Same way with yahoo. So it’s not even just the secure areas that are giving me problems.
I followed your suggestion and it still doesn’t give a page with a code on it. It’s the same message as always.
Seems like you are having problems with secure web sites.
Do you have a banking or credit card site you can try to log in to, to see if you get the same results?
I don’t know if this error would be a problem with your router or your browser or something else…but I THINK it’s your router since it happens on all your machines. However - have you tried installing another browser such as Firefox just to test this theory? You don’t have to permanently switch to FF or anything, but trying it would rule out or confirm your browser as the problem.
BTW…Friendly HTTP errors are only going to show you stuff like coding errors - you aren’t experiencing a coding error.
I agree that this sounds like a secure website problem. You have to use https to log in. A quick way to check this might be to use Amazon. When you log in to Amazon to look at an account, you can use either a secure or non-secure connection. Try the secure one and see if you get an error. Again, I’m not good enough with IE to know why you’d suddenly be unable to access secure web sites.
I didn’t notice that this was happening with multiple computers until just now. That seems strange to me. Offhand, I can’t think of anything on a router that would prevent secure connections. If your router has a sophisticated built-in firewall, it may be preventing connections for the https ports. That sounds really weird, but it may be happening.
I’m able to access my American Express account, but when I try to go to my banking account, it’s the same ole mess. I can get to my Amazon (https:) account okay.
I don’t think it’s my router because the problem persists even when I connect directly through my cable modem. I turned off the modem and turned it back on, to no avail.
Firefox is doing the same thing IE is doing. Except Firefox tells me that the connect has timed out.
I’m flummoxed.
Take the Tweak Test: TCP Tweak test | DSLReports, ISP Information
I had this problem before and it was fixed by adjusting my MTU (more info on the link I posted).