Cannot Browse Certain Sites from my Laptop

I am using an Earthlink DSL connection on mjy Gateway laptop and for the last couple of weeks, either in Opera 8.51 or IE I cannot browse certain sites such as Web Mail from the Earthlink.net site. However on my wife's laptop, compaz Presario, Ican browse those sites just fine. Could someone help me please?

I have run Nod32 scan and also run a trial of Spysweeper but nothing showed with that. I do not know what this behavior is about. I use Win XP Pro SP2 and I would appreciate very much your help. In the recent past I was able to browse these sites but I don't know what has happened now.

Gary

 

Hi Gary;

You're probably using a Hosts File and it's listed in it. Open your Hosts with notepad, use "Ctrl" + "F" to search for the entry and either delete those lines (Earthlink.net and www.Earthlink.net) or enter the pound sign (#) in front of those two entries to disable them. Then re-save the file; make sure you don't save it with the .txt extension - it has to be just "Hosts".

For WinXP the path to the Hosts file is C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS

HTH;

Steve

 

Thanks but the only thing I see in the Host file is my localhost listed. There are no Web sites listed in this. If this is the case, what else might it be?

Gary

 

Not sure what has changed of late but I use the following

1. Windows firewall
2. Nod32
3. Microsoft Antispyware
4. Spybot S&D
5. Spyware Blaster
6. Ad_Aware SE
7. Ace Utilities 3
8. Opera 8.51

I think that's all of them. Just in case I ran sfc scannow and all seemed to complete with that. Thanks again very much.

Gary

 

Could you explain or show precisely what happens when you try to access these sites? Obviously you do not see what you expect to, but what do you see?

Blue

 

As far as I know, I run no realtime scanning except for Nod. Also, I tried the earthlink.com and same thing. Sometimes I see a light blue border at top and white background while at other times I see a dark blue background covering the screen as if page backgrounds are being loaded but no text or login forms are shown.

Will try to look at each spyware program and see if I can figure something out. and thanks again to all.

Gary

 

Just to make sure you are starting from a clean slate, completely empty your browser's cache and remove retained cookies.

Blue

 

So far still no luck but it is so hard for me to think something on my computer is causing the problem. Could it be that for some reason on this particular computer that either Earthlink is not properly refreshing my pages or there is something wrond with one of the servers they are using in this area if that's how they distribute this type of service. Thanks again.

Gary

 

Just tried to load the Symantec online scan page to see if that would show me anything. But in Opera 8.51, I get a Javascript error. Maybe the whole problem is my Java is broken in IE and Opera. Any suggestions here in repairing Java or setting options differnetly. I beleive all Javascript options in Opera are enabled. Thanks again.

Gary

 

Loaded Firefox and I now can access web mail under earthlink site. However, I did a uninstall of opera 8.51 and deleted entries from registry, reinstalled but cannot get it to work with that page yet. And, IE 6 does not show the page yet either. Wish I could solve these little annoyances. Thanks again for your kind help.

Gary

 

Yes, I did clear the cache in IE.

Gary

 

Have started from the ground up again a new clean reinstall of Windows and Opera 8>51. Now, I can see my web mail site in Earthlink fine but I still cannot play the video clips in CNet's site for some reason either in IE or Opera. Anybody have any clues on this. I installed Falsh Player 8 standalone but I don't know if that is something I should have done or not to get it to work. Anyway, so far no luck with this but some improvement nevertheless. Thanks again.

Gary

 

What happens when you select one of the videos....or are you even seeing any videos to select ?

They are using Macromedia Flash Player for the videos if you were not aware.

 

Iss the small pcitures on the homepage but when I select one, it just shows a black window where the video should be playing. The button acts like it has been pushed to play but no sound or picture is displayed jsut black. Maybe I will reinstall faalsh player again and try to get it to work with Opera 8.51 some way. I tries installed the flash player for IE but it stil does not work. Could be my ActiveX settings are off but I don't know. Again, thanks for your continuing help.

Gary

 

Seeing the small pics tells me that Flash Player is working given the fact those pics are being generated because Macromedia flash player is loaded. In fact if you right click one of those you should see the below result.

 

Yes, I see all of that but as I say they just don't play either in Opera or IE, just show the black screen with no picture or sound or any movement whatsoever.

The Opera Plugin for Flash says it is installed but still no go here.

Gary