Help Fixing Parents Computer

S

SPPaintball

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
Messages
122
I don't really know what forum this belongs in because I have no idea what the problem deals with, so I'm sorry if it's in the wrong one.

My parents have a pretty old Compaq. (We're talking maybe 8 years, here)

The stupid thing won't accept cookies or something. On Newegg, for instance, you can't access wish lists. They don't even show up. You can't create them either. And on a site my parents are trying to log onto, it won't let them log on. It gives them a timeout error (Not like a "could not get connection" timeout, it's a "you've been logged on for a long time, you need to log back in" timeout). I've been trying to figure this out for a long time, and I can't figure out why it won't work... I made sure cookies were enabled, I turned the firewalls off, I tried several different browsers... But no cigar.

Anyone know what's going on? Thanks everyone.

EDIT: I went in the command promt and tried to ping a few sites, and they all timed out. And the computer is connected to the internet.
 
Im assuming that they are running XP?

Have you tried running the repair wizard off the disk? Maybe un/reinstall internet explorer. Also, check to see what they are using for antivirus, pop up protection, and ad/spyware scanners. My mother in law had a program, I think it was called e-accelrator, or something, that she bought online to protect against pop ups. The junky program killed her internet access! I tried and tried to figure her problem out, and finally when I removed all of the various protection programs she had on there her system ran flawlessly. Was very difficult to remove, though.

Go with the standards, ie ad-aware, spybot, AVG, ccleaner. See if they help.
 
Yes, it's running Windows XP. Windows is up to date, and the only virus/spyware protection I found was the McAffee suite, Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad-Aware SE, and a popup blocker called Stopzilla.

I disabled the McAffee and the Windows firewall and it still didn't work. Turned off the popup blocker, and still no luck.
 
Wireless internet?
try mozilla firefox on it.
 
It's actually the only computer in the house that's not running on wireless. It's just plugged into the router.

EDIT: Already tried IE, Opera, and Firefox.
 
Try plugging it in as the first thing out of the modem... That means before your router or wireless setup. See if it works then.
 
Arcygenical said:
Try plugging it in as the first thing out of the modem... That means before your router or wireless setup. See if it works then.
Click to expand...
Doesn't sound internet related, seems more likely that it's the installation of windows to blame... Have you ran chkdsk or defragged it lately?
 
elite.mafia said:
Doesn't sound internet related, seems more likely that it's the installation of windows to blame... Have you ran chkdsk or defragged it lately?
Click to expand...
I have no idea if they have or not. I'm willing to bet that they haven't defragged for months. If ever.
 
Being that I have never heard of stopzilla, I checked out their web page and it sounds like it could be blocking their services needed for those web pages you mentioned. I'd try uninstalling that, then cleaning the sysytem w/ ccleaner, then running a spybot and adaware scan. After that, go to add/remove programs, and make sure there are no 'bonus' programs that came with stopZilla. Then in add new windows components, reinstall internet explorer. Sounds to me like the IE is corrupted.

Are they running cable internet? If so, have you swapped the ethernet card? Maybe the card is going bad.

If dial up, same thing? Also, check all the lines running to and from. Replace to test.

If its not hardware, then it has to be software. Try what everyone else said about installing a new internet browser like firefox. If it doesn't work, then you know its IE corrupt.
 
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