internet explorer could not open the search page 12

[Drachenhunter]

Hello,


I have two computers that share a dsl connection. right now one computer works and the other doesn't. on the one that doesn't work every time I enter an address(web or ip) I get a message that "internet explorer could not open the web page. The dsl is set up correctly on that computer as I can ping both ip address and web site names. also I've read a post somewhere once before about how to correct this error (by deleteing/renaming some .dll's) but I cannot find it now that I need it. I've tried uninstalling IE and re installing it. but when I uninstalled it, windowsME(R) tried to re install a previous version and that didnt work(it kept getting an error).

I've loaded up the ME disc and re loaded it and nothing same thing, I might as well not have done it. I'm really tapped out right now, I can't figure out what to do, I can ping but nothing else I can't even telnet into the router(I might be doing it wrong though.) Please if anyone knows what I can do I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[bcastner]

mcubexm,

I am a little constrained by an MS NDA as to what I can say at the moment, but I too feel the Windows DHCP client is not as aggresive in pulling an address prior to resolving using the APIA service.

I cannot promise you more than I know at this moment, but I do expect a revision.

While it will not help, a possible explanation can be found in the MS KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;167014

And many have been helped by my notes and the use of the utility discussed here: faq779-4625

Best wishes,
Bill Castner

 

[KevinOMalley]

I fixed my problem by unbinding the AOL adapter to TCP/IP.


I had a very similar problem and went through all kinds of debugging efforts, including almost all that was suggested at the microsoft.com under the article, "Error Message: The Page Cannot Be Displayed".

I tried In10City's trick, as well as downloaded Winsockfix but the problem still did not go away. I had tried several ways to remove or uninstall AOL from my Dell Dimension which is running under Windows 98. There was still this annoying instance of the AOL adapter.

Here is where I was at:
Start --> Settings --> Control Panel --> Network
In the Configuration tab, the AOL Adapter does not go away even after several attempts at uninstall. If I click REMOVE at this point, my computer hangs and the AOL adapter does not go away. Aggravating little trick, AOL.

I tried In10City's approach, even trying the process twice to remove the TCP/IP bindings on the AOL adapter as well. But it didn't work.

But In10City DID give me an idea. Here is what I did:
Start --> Settings --> Control Panel --> Network
In the Configuration tab, click on the AOL Adapter, and then hit the Properties button. Click on the bindings button, unclick TCP/IP. Hit ok, and apply. If a popup screen asks if you want to add new bindings, click NO.
Restart the computer.

What this did was make the AOL adapter go into a state where it didn't know where it was supposed to be bound in TCP/IP, whereas all of the other communication devices on the system knew what to do.

I still haven't figured out how to get rid of the AOL Adapter entirely, but at least it's not messing up my system.

best of luck

Kevin O'Malley

 

[iHateBadware]

I joined up to say thanks to all here...Google found you...and especially to bcastner, who gave the point towards WinSockFix.

Here's my story...a little more cause and effect info.

Initial problem with the system I was working on was poor performance. It became obvious rather quickly that it was loaded up pretty good with Badware of various sorts...including a search assistant and some search redirection going on.

I had been using my usual array of previously effective ammo on this sort of problem - HijackThis, Ad-Aware, Spybot, and eventually LSPFix after I realized I had lost my Internet Connectivity. In the past I had been able to recover from this happening when the LSP gets fouled up byt the browser hijackers, but after another couple hours more manually digging around and trying several other tricks...nothing was fixing the TCP.

I had the same symptoms as many above:

"Internet Explorer could not open the search page"
DOS PING Internet sites worked fine
Windows did not like IP Addresses at all..."Run" IPs could not see others on network
Could see others on the network with Netbuei (that was helpful)
No AIM...No Telnet...No E-mail
File-sharing Programs would not connect (funny though one of those gave the best error message - something to the effect of "unable to locate or open any tcp ports" (that made sense...none of that misleading "search page opening" message from IE.)

That's when I stumbled into your forum and found out about WinSockFix. Didn't work the first try though...just a quick unzip of the program and click on the "FIX" button, a reboot and I still had the problem. Like most things, if it doesn't work the first time I always give it one more chance after I read the instructions, manual, readme.txt or in this case...clicked the "INFO" button just for the heck of it.

More "INFO" there than I expected. Fist line the program author says..."To repair Winsock/TCP in Win9x, me manually do this:." Since Win98SE was my system, I followed suit and "me manually do that too"....then rebooted...I could tell something looked better when coming into Windows and Norton didn't start right up as usual bitching and telling me I was going to "have to reinstall NAV" and by the way "my network was not configured properly".

I wasn't expecting the next 2 messages though. First "nCase was unable to properly finish loading". 2nd "nCase has caused an illegal operation in Kernel32". I knew nCase had installed and figured it responsible for a lot of the problems, but I was pretty sure it had been cleaned off. I had found no remains of it after cleaning the obvious and previously known tracks it leaves. I knew from previous experience removing it and the other associated CRAPWARE that the SCUMBAGS at 180Solutions trash millions of unsuspecting users computers with, that it was tough to deal with, but I had been successful a number of times before...and after one of thes network disasters previously (nCase was there too). It had been running invisibly in the background all the time...one of the most vigourously resistant MALWAREs out there.

Now exposed and crippled and with a set of manual removal instructions from

http://www.doxdesk.com,

I effectively removed from the system nCase along with a couple other piggybacking pieces of installed trash. TCP is restored, all works well, and I am cookin' on the Internet!!!

I am glad to have yet another tool to fight back against these low-lives that create these problems. It is amazing to me that their greed not only ruins so many innocent peoples' Computer and Internet Experience while costing them small fortunes to have techs restore them, but that they collectively help each other to the feeding frenzy until they bring systems down to their knees...effectively biting off the hands that feed them.

180Solutions - nCase - n-Case - msbb.exe - BAD STUFF!!! Lots of associates...read up on this one, keep an eye-out, careful when removing!

Thanks again for the forum...see you around.

 

[mcubexm]

jbotz,,
I read you once offer to help someone if their DNS servers are not matching, can you brief me this regard i have a similar problem.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Michaeljwyo]

Hey Ihatebadware....I agree with you 100%. This is my first post here and I must say there's a machine on my bench as we speak that's got the stupid n-case crap on it. I just recently finished up a machine that had the same problem of "Internet Explorer can't open the search page." Searched that out on the internet and ended up here. I've browsed this forum before and found so many useful tips and tricks that I decided to go ahead and join up. Being a technician and owner of my own computer repair business, maybe I can help people out here as well. Anyways I just wanted to say Thank You to the creator of the winsock fix program. It fixed the problem (on a machine running WinXP) on the first try. Before, I've always had to go in and manually edit the registry entries and so forth.
This guy is apparantly a good programmer. Any chance he could write us all a little program to do all of the legwork in getting rid of all the N-case bullcrap?? Getting all the n-case crap off of a machine is such a time-consuming and painful effort.

Thanks again
Michael

 

[trhill]

Used bcastners winsock program because I kept getting Internet Explorer could not open the search page. The winsock program worked like a charm.

 

[bcastner]

Thanks all for the nice comments, and it makes me very happy to see so many success stories from repairing the Winsock service stack. The most up-to-date news can always be found in FAQ: faq779-4625

Best wishes to all,
Bill Castner

 

[jemwell]

I have just set up a Wireless DSL Gateway from Actiontec. I have three boxes and a laptop running on the network (the Actiontec has a DHCP server).
One of my desktops connected great for about an hour, but now refuses to work on the network. It gets a strong signal from the Gateway but will not pull an address!

I haven't yet been able to figure out how to try to manually assign an address with the Gateway (my next step). I get these errors:

("IE cannot open search page etc etc"). when i try to sign into msn i get an "0x81000365 unable to connect because you may be behind a firewall".

Obviously(I think) a connectivity problem, but I'm not sure where to go from here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[saros]

KevinOMalley thanks soooooo much!!! I had compuserve and got high speed internet today. I was unable connect even though I tried fixing all properties and rebooted like 20 times. I read your message to remove binding in the AOL Adapter and it works perfect now. I would recommend it to everyone who has a similar situation since it is such an easy and quick solution. Thanks again.

 

[chcctechteacher]

bcastner

I have a similar problem with getting the message "Internet Explorer could not open the search page." I switch the cable back and forth between a desktop and a laptop. The desktop works fine, the laptop gets the error. both systems are on Win2000 and IE v 6.0.2800

I have one other item to throw in the mix: When I look at the status of my connection on the laptop, the "Sent" is increasing all the time at a fairly rapid rate and the "Received" is increasing at a much slower rate.

Also, I cannot get the

http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/544752~62fe0e8dc00fac87e6f0f83c54d283a4/WinsockFix.zip

link to work. I get the dreaded little picture in the upper left corner and that is it. Trying to go to Shaw.ca is worthless; they do not have a place to search for anything and they do not have WinsockFix anywhere to download. If there another source?

Thanks for any help you can give.

chcctechteacher - Greg

 

[bcastner]

Do it by hand if using XP:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811259

(The link works fine, I just tested it).

I suspect in your case it is a MAC authenitcation issue. Many cable systems preserve the MAC address of the physical adapter used when you first setup your cable connection.

If you change adapters and/or machines, you need to call them with the new MAC address of the workstation.

Start, Run, cmd
ipconfig /all

(look for the value listed as the Physical Address of the adapter. This is what your cable system needs to know has changed).

This is exactly why residential routers such as Linksys, D-Link, Netgear and others offer a MAC "cloning" feature, so that the router appears to the cable system with the identical MAC address of the primary computer used to set up the connection.

 

[fedupwithPCs]

Just wanted to thank everyone on this thread for advice.

I had the same problem - I had used AdAware to remove sahAgent, belt.exe etc, and when this was done, IE 6 would not display web pages (although I could connect via my dial-up connection). Typing in other address would display the infamous error "Internet Explorer could not open the search page".

After much fretting, google searches (on another machine) etc, etc I eventually found this thread, downloaded the "Winsock Fix", ran, reboot and so far (touch wood) all seems fine.

Many thanks!

 

[blackpaladin]

Bcastner or whomever -

I don't know if my problem is as harsh (I hope not...). I'm using a D-Link Router with a cable modem broadband service. Two computers on the network, both running XP Home. The connection seems to work fine, but occaisionally we open IE and it just hangs and says it can't find the page (particularly after a lengthy period of inactivity on the computer). So, to "wake it up" we need to reboot and then IEs use of the connection is fine! What is making it necessary to reboot, in effect waking it up to availability of the broadband connection?

Thanks, Vince.

 

[bcastner]

See if that router does not have a firmware upgrade available. DHCP service lease renewal has been a firmware issue for some routers.

Also, your router has a feature to "clone" the MAC address of one of your computers. Please use that feature as well.

 

[blackpaladin]

Both of those items were part of the setup. I have the latest firmware and it has the cloned MAC addresses. Just this morning, in checking for a reply in this forum, my connection was good and I opened IE but it would just hang looking for the page. I tried a couple of tests using IP addresses rather than domain names. IE would resolve a couple of the websites and 1 or 2 others would fail (may be unrelated...?). Anyhow, my point is that it "seemed" to be able to resolve IPs but not domain names. I also tried the Winsock XP fix just for kicks, that was last night before this mornings attempt to use IE, obviously it did not effect the situation. So, I did a quick restart, as usual, and I surfing normally. Any more ideas?

 

[dmichaelson]

Hi, wondering where I should start with a Windows 2000 setup.. For the last few days, after about 2 minutes of use I also get the "Internet Explorer could not open the search page" problem. Not only that, when that happens, the two Mac OS X systems that are also connected to our Netgear RP614 router, also lose their internet connection! The problem is caused by the PC though, if I unplug it from the network (and restart the router and the Macs) the Macs work fine.

And the PC doesn't work any better if I take the Macs away, although I haven't tried plugging the PC directly into the DSL modem without the router, because Windows 2000 doesn't have built-in PPPoE and the router is providing DHCP.

I guess the consensus is that this issue is caused by some sort of malware? I'm usually pretty careful about that stuff. Should I start by trying WinSockFix, or under Windows 2000 are there steps I should do before that? It's all a bit painful since I haven't really got a network connection to the PC anymore except for 2 minutes at a time (i.e. to download WinSockFix) and it's the only PC in here.

 

[dmichaelson]

I've now now run WinSock Fix and also followed Microsoft's instructions to delete the Winsock & Winsock2 registry keys, restart, uninstall TCP, restart, & reinstall it, restart.... Didn't help.

I still can only surf about one webpage on the Win2000 PC and then none of the computers attached to the router can find webpages, mail servers, etc. anymore.

Ping does still seem to work though, as does Windows networking.

Any ideas of what to try next?
Thanks for any help.

 

[bcastner]

Try faq608-4650