Internt Explorer does not work - need help!

B

BigDan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 22, 2003
Messages
324
Hi guys,

First of all, this is on a laptop running XP with SP2.

I have been using firefox for years and have not really needed internet explorer. For as long as I can remember (I dunno, a year or so at least - I've had this computer for 3 years) I've tried to fire up IE now and then on this machine and it cannot connect to the internet (even tho Firefox connects just fine). This hasn't really been an issue until now, because I need to run microsoft update in order to fix some other issues.

So I've tried to fix IE by installing the latest version from the microsoft website. No luck. Then I went and removed IE by going to the control panel and removing it through the "add / remove windows components" options and then I reinstalled it. No luck there either.

I went into the IE options and hit the "restore manufacturers settings" button and restored everything... still didn't work.

Looking on the microsoft website all they seem to suggest is to reinstall windows... awesome. Like I really want to do that... I don't even know where my cd's went. -_-

However I think that may be what I have to do... I'd like to avoid that but perhaps its inevitable... any suggestions anyone can provide would be most helpful as I find this problem to be especially frustrating because my internet works just fine.

Thanks in advance.
 
Doesn't it have a option connect to internet? I remember a few weeks ago my internet was fine and firefox was working. But IE wouldn't connect. A pop up came up to connect to internet worked after that.
 
pazhman said:
Doesn't it have a option connect to internet? I remember a few weeks ago my internet was fine and firefox was working. But IE wouldn't connect. A pop up came up to connect to internet worked after that.
Click to expand...

Hmm... yeah I see what you are saying... and I tried to play around with this a bit yesterday.

I have DSL and use a router so I just went to options and tried to "set up a new internet connection". I went ahead and followed the steps... at the end it said since I have a broadband connection that is always on I don't need to do anything. Oh and I'm not in "work offline" mode.


I only use the windows firewall - tried disabling that and it did nothing. Hell I tried turning my antivirus software off too but that didn't do anything.



When I open up "cmd" and do something like "ping google.com" it works fine.

I tried to release and renew my ip address... still no luck.

Now one thing I'm thinking... I read some stuff about how it could possibly be some Microsoft Hotfixes - I guess I'm gonna try to uninstall a few of those and see what happens... any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated tho. :)


----------------------------------------
Edit / Update


Well I couldn't find any hotfixes to uninstall... I was thinking perhaps I need to get SP3 for XP... buuuuuuuut... I need IE to get SP3... unless anyone knows of a way to get around that. Otherwise it's a major catch 22.
 
I use the IE Tab addon in Firefox to go to open update.microsoft.com in an IE tab within firefox and update through that.

That's how I roll. Should work for you.
 
drdeutsch said:
I use the IE Tab addon in Firefox to go to open update.microsoft.com in an IE tab within firefox and update through that.

That's how I roll. Should work for you.
Click to expand...

Now THAT is an excellent idea!! Thank you sir.


Edit - Ok so I installed that... and when I try to open up an explorer tab it says the page can't be displayed! >_<

I dunno what I'm gonna do... well, actually I do know what I'm gonna do... I'm gonna fiddle around w/ this some more but please keep the suggestions coming folks!
 
I've found a standalone download of SP3 - I'm gonna try that I guess. Lets hope it does something good!
 
BigDan said:
Now THAT is an excellent idea!! Thank you sir.

Edit - Ok so I installed that... and when I try to open up an explorer tab it says the page can't be displayed! >_<
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I open IE Tab and add "http://*update.microsoft.com/*" to the sites filter (so it automatically opens in an IE Tab) and it seems to work just fine.

It sounds like you might have some sort of larger Microsoft Problem (IE, Windows sites, etc). Is it possible it could be some sort of Virus/spyware?
 
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