BLocked in IE8, but not in FireFox

[FredWagner]

The system: a very stock home Vista-64 system with IE8, kept patched with WindowsUpdate, running F-Prot for malware protection.
The issue: A couple of weeks ago, on all of our active Vista profiles, using IE8, we can't get to any Hotmail accounts, nor Facebook, nor even my work iNotes account. But we can connect to the Hotmail accounts, Facebook, and even iNotes through Firefox with no problems at all.
Has anyone else experienced this ?

Fred Wagner

 

[MarcLodge]

Hi Fred,
Try running malwarebytes, but also look at your IE8 settings, in particular look at
Tools--> Internet Options--> Connections --> LAN Settings

Automatically detect settings should be ticked
Use a proxy server for your LAN shoud NOT be ticked

Hope this helps
Marc

 

[FredWagner]

The symptoms went away, without any changes in configuration, which had been set correctly all along. Now I can reach the sites in IE which I couldn't before. A change in my ISP's DNS perhaps (AT&T DSL)? The problem had been happening in both my Vista-64 box with IE8, and an old Win2K laptop with IE6. Win2K doesn't get Windows Updates any more, I doubt that it was Microsoft's fix. One of life's puzzles.

Fred Wagner