Silly Browser Quetion

[Dancing David]

hello,

My wife's work laptop has a strange symtom that i have seen on other macines recently. the only web page she can open in IE7 is the home page. All other pages come back as unavailable.

I am clueless, where should I look. I am thinking of running a registry reset but wanted to check. It seems free of malware. I have emptied all the internet folders as well.

[Ducky]

hello,

My wife's work laptop has a strange symtom that i have seen on other macines recently. the only web page she can open in IE7 is the home page. All other pages come back as unavailable.

I am clueless, where should I look. I am thinking of running a registry reset but wanted to check. It seems free of malware. I have emptied all the internet folders as well.

XP? Vista?


May have something to do with network connection settings. Wireless or wired connection?

[Dancing David]

Um ,sorry XP and it happen either on ethernet or wireless.

[rjh01]

Delete the cache. Alter the home page. If the new home page works then go to the old one.

Once you have done this you will know a lot more.

[Ducky]

Delete the cache. Alter the home page. If the new home page works then go to the old one.

Once you have done this you will know a lot more.

CCleaner is a good tool for not only clearing out all application caches but for finding registry fizxes as well. I'd also suggets an antimalware scan with malwarebytes' anti-malware tool.

[Dancing David]

CCleaner is a good tool for not only clearing out all application caches but for finding registry fizxes as well. I'd also suggets an antimalware scan with malwarebytes' anti-malware tool.

Done both, but didn't do the registry clean and fix. I use CCleaner and ATF cleaner regularly, M-bam is my current choice, until SAS moves ahead. (I use them a lot at work when we have infections, I like M-bam because I upload files.)

the techs at work gave us a registry repair that i am thinking of as the next to last step.

(We both work at the same school district, she is in different buildings than I am.)

Thanks for the suggestion, I am flumoxed on this one. I checked the DNS adresses and they were good, but I am about to see if they have a host file. Her co-worker used the machine and may have messed it up somehow. I would not put him past having used a proxy site to get around firewalls.

[Ducky]

Done both, but didn't do the registry clean and fix. I use CCleaner and ATF cleaner regularly, M-bam is my current choice, until SAS moves ahead. (I use them a lot at work when we have infections, I like M-bam because I upload files.)

the techs at work gave us a registry repair that i am thinking of as the next to last step.

(We both work at the same school district, she is in different buildings than I am.)

Thanks for the suggestion, I am flumoxed on this one. I checked the DNS adresses and they were good, but I am about to see if they have a host file. Her co-worker used the machine and may have messed it up somehow. I would not put him past having used a proxy site to get around firewalls.

Totally my next suggestion. Is Tor or a browser plug in for a proxy installed?

[Dancing David]

Totally my next suggestion. Is Tor or a browser plug in for a proxy installed?

I am trying to figure that out, but haven't researched it yet. there is signs of a proxy cahche when you go to IE Connections and look at LAN setting (the one with 'detect setting automatically), there is a greyed out info on proxy cache with port 8080 but I am not sure where to go from there. I though about using group policy to redirect it, but i would rather remove it. I went through the add-ons and disabled the ones that aren't Microsoft and was considering turning them all off to see what happens.

I am really a piker when it comes to this. The tech said it would be okay if I just install Firefox, which is against district policy.

[grmcdorman]

If policy allows USB thumb-drives, you can get Portable Firefox (http://www.portableapps.com), which will run from the thumb drive without installing on the host.

I use it at work all the time, because my bookmarks are saved to the external drive.

If you can't use an external USB drive, there are a few command-line things such as 'wget' or 'lynx' which don't require installation, but they are more fiddly to get and use.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Could it be a virus or such like?

~~ Paul

[Ducky]

I am trying to figure that out, but haven't researched it yet. there is signs of a proxy cahche when you go to IE Connections and look at LAN setting (the one with 'detect setting automatically), there is a greyed out info on proxy cache with port 8080 but I am not sure where to go from there. I though about using group policy to redirect it, but i would rather remove it. I went through the add-ons and disabled the ones that aren't Microsoft and was considering turning them all off to see what happens.

I am really a piker when it comes to this. The tech said it would be okay if I just install Firefox, which is against district policy.

That could be corporate policy. Many companies use a proxy internally to enforce policy. Check the installed programs dialogue for Tor or other proxy software that may interfere with the internal infrastructure.

[Dancing David]

Well, I played with it and the tehrnet portion of the problem has resolved itself. At least when my wife is on the school network.

The wireless is the problem, as Firefox will not load either. I am going to try resetting the TCP/IP and winsock and see if that helps.

[Ducky]

Well, I played with it and the tehrnet portion of the problem has resolved itself. At least when my wife is on the school network.

The wireless is the problem, as Firefox will not load either. I am going to try resetting the TCP/IP and winsock and see if that helps.

Next question:

I assume this is a laptop with wireless? Is there a switch to turn off the wireless card that was bumped possibly? I have that problem from time to time on a gateway netbook I have which has the switch to do that on the front panel (pain in the ass.)

[Dancing David]

Next question:

I assume this is a laptop with wireless? Is there a switch to turn off the wireless card that was bumped possibly? I have that problem from time to time on a gateway netbook I have which has the switch to do that on the front panel (pain in the ass.)

yes, the switch is on, in IE7 it will connect to the school district home page, but no where else, in Firefox it won't connect at all.

(Which is why maybe resetting the TCP/IP will work.)

It connects with the ethernet now, I didn't check it before yeterday. But the wireless is strange, only on my wife's account. If I log on as an admin (I have the backdoor password) then it connects just fine. We are off the domain at home, so I can't log on with my account yet.

ETA: I can't give her admin rights at home, I am thinking I can remote in while I am at work and give her admin rights, when I am on the domain I can't do that.

[Dancing David]

Final update:

Nothing I did effected it, at all. However now that the machine has connected to the work network a couple of times, it is working fine again. Must have been some change in the security settings that took a while to propagate and repropagate.