One of my wife’s computers is a 17-inch HP G72 Notebook PC. It is running Windows 7 Premium (2009). She uses Firefox, but the computer also has Explorer. When she clicks in the search box, a list of websites pops up. When she clicks on the links, the URL appears in the search box but nothing loads. She just has a blank white screen. I tried to navigate using Explorer and got the message ‘Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage. What you can try: Diagnose Connection Problems’ There’s also a dropdown menu with suggested problems. (The Diagnose Connection Problems didn’t find anything.) Top of the list is not being connected to the Internet. I see in the Control Panel that her computer is connected to our Wi-Fi. I tried clicking Setup in the Connections tab, and it says ‘You are already connected to the Internet.’
So… What gives? How can we make her browsers browse?
Such an obsolete setup, Win 7 and Internet Explorer, won’t be able to display the majority of current websites. There haven’t been updates for both in ages.
It’s been working. She uses that computer every day for her documents she emails to the State. What would have happened yesterday to make it stop working?
That’s a good plan, if the new computer at least has Win 10. It’s a high security risk to still browse the internet on a Win 7 computer, especially if you’re operating with “State” documents.
It sounds like a network problem. Although it says it’s connected to wifi, there may still be some kind of network issue. Try rebooting and see if that helps.
I saw something that said to disable Adobe in the browsers, but I don’t know how to do that in 2009 Explorer or Firefox. I may try just restarting her computer.
My gf’s family all consider me an IT genius (I am not) because when asked about their computer problems I reboot their computer and the problem goes away.
Glad you got it working. But, if she’s willing to try out different browsers, you may want to look into using Supermium, which is a build of Chrome that works on Windows XP and above.
It is still receiving security updates, and gets updated to the latest extended release version of Chrome. So it stays modern, even putting out emergency updates for severe exploits.
That said, official Firefox is good until after September of this year—assuming you’re using the ESR version. The latest is ESR 115.9.13.
This message is coming to you from Windows 7 and an “obsolete” version of Firefox. I could also send you a similar message from Windows 7 and an obsolete version of Chrome or Edge. There is no website that I’ve ever yet had a problem with. (Internet Explorer is, admittedly, truly obsolete.)
It’s true that those products haven’t been updated in some time, but the idea that these “won’t be able to display the majority of current websites” is just nonsense. I believe in keeping up with technology when it’s warranted and necessary, but I don’t agree with “new-ism” just for the sake of “new” when existing tech works just fine if you know what you’re doing in terms of malware protection.
