No links work online

I have a friend who bought a used computer just to play around with,and they can go online fine,but once online no links work--and I mean none whatsoever work.All they get is cant display this page or something to that effect.anyone know what could be wrong?It's useless for them to be online.thanks for any ideas .

 

A likely candidate is that the Winsock lsp chain is broken or corrupted. They need to reset it.

Use this utility if you have WinXP. Otherwise, do a google search for lspfix or try to download this one for Win98 and above.

Blue

 

Hi Blue
they cant download anything,cant go to any sites at all. I,maybe could download it to cd and see if they can install it,would that work?Thanks for replying!

 

RTitaann,

I prefer the automated approach, but if they don't have access and you can get the download to them easily, see info posted by Blackspear here. Clear directions to a manual fix.

Blue

 

Helping others again Rita, nice to hear it. If they have bought the PC second hand it could be filled with an endless amount of junk. They may want to consider doing a system recovery and start a fresh, then install whatever they need again.

Jimbob

 

Thanks Blue

 

Trying to help,the pc is pretty old and I dont think it even has any disks with it(not sure though)It has windows ME.whoever had it had spybot and adware se installed and the scans didnt show any spyware.I tried to install a few programs on it but they wouldnt install so i dont know if the utility blue was talking about would install either,but I may try it.I tried system restore and it wouldnt even come up when I clicked on it.They may have to take it to the shop and then it may not be worth fixing even

 

Ritaann,

Try the manual route if that's simplest. The first time that I had a problem with Winsock, it was due to Adaware pulling out some junk, leaving the lsp chain broken. It's not too hard to imagine that's the case here. The fix is not terribly difficult. Here's another link to check: How to Fix Winsock Problems In Windows 9x/Me. If you do a google search on WinME+Winsock+fix you will turn up lots of discussions and links. Check a few out and you'll get comfortable with what's happening.

Blue

 

Thank you Blue
I will check out the links and do a search too.I appreciate it!