Unable to open secure webpages in Internet Explorer 1

[isaacmoody]

Help!!

For some reason i am unable to open secure webages like logging into Hotmail or trying to use internet banking.

I have MSIE 6 SP1 installed on Win98SE, so i have a cipher strength of 128-bit. Under update versions in Help>>About there is "SP1; q313829; Q328970; Q324929;".

I have absolutely no idea why this started happening, it was fine until one day i tried openning a secure webpage and it came up with:
"The page cannot be displayed" and
"Cannot find server or DNS Error
Internet Explorer"

Please can anyone help? I've tried using the IE repair tool but that did nothing and it won't let me uninstall IE.

What do i do??

THANKS MUCHLY!!

Isaac

 

[carrr]

Strange as it may seem, try this first....make SURE your pc's date and time are correct.

 

[carrr]

If this is not the fix, search for and run IE501DOM.EXE
...still no joy??, post back and we'll try something else...

 

[isaacmoody]

Ahh! Thanks for the help!!

My computer's date and time is correct and a search for that file turned up nothing...

Any other ideas?

Have you ever heard of anything like this happening before?

 

[carrr]

You bet...strangeness is abound on lots of people's machines. 6.0 is a buggy one.
You can try to install over your current instance of 6.0 and see what happens.
Got any Norton or Zone Alarm/firewall software running? If so, disable it momentarily and try hitting one of the questionable sites. Still the same problem?
Try this:
...you might simply have a cache, or cookie problem. Search out and delete any cookies that may be related to the problem pages. Shut down all programmes and boot into dos. Run the following commands from the windows directory, typically c:\windows\>

smartdrv
deltree history
deltree tempor~1

Reboot using ctrl, alt, del.

Search your computer for a hidden file called HOSTS. Open HOSTS using Notepad and remove any reference to the problem site/s.

Also, download Adaware 6.0 (

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/)

or SpyBot (

http://spybot.eon.net.au/)

and give your system a thorough going over. There's plenty of spyware popping up every day that cause new and unusual weirdness with people's machines.

I know this is a lot...but...there's a lot of possibilities. Post back if still no joy...

 

[isaacmoody]

Ahh! Thankyou for your help!!! The problem's fixed!

It was interference from Norton Personal Firewall! I have no idea why, but it was. You see, i was using a trialware Norton Personal Firewall but the trial ran out a few days ago. Even though i had access to secure websites when NPFW was still active, for some reason because the trial had run out and it was still installed on the computer, it blocked access to secure websites (even though the program wasn't even running or active!).

I have absolutely no idea why it was so, but i unistalled NPFW and now everything is fine.

Norton must just be plain old evil and want to stuff with Trialware users minds

Thanks heaps for the help!
Isaac

 

[carrr]

Yup...
knew we'd find it eventually.