Here's a situation I've never run into. Computer (practically brand new)
running XP Home SP1, user has AOL as his ISP (I know, I know...) Anyway, a
problem has developed with surfing the web. Say he wants to go to Yahoo.com
or Hotmail.com or even his bank. It goes there fine opens the page no
problem.
But when he attempts to feed in his Username/password on these or ANY
website requiring these, he gets "Page cannot be displayed" - within
milliseconds by the way. This occurs within either AOL's interface or, once
connected, if we launch IE 6.0 and try it through IE.
I suspected a security setting of some kind but I just can't figure
out what the problem stems from: Is it in Internet Explorer? I've looked
all over Tools/Internet Options/General and Advanced. Is it a setting in XP
Home
itself? I've looked over Networking and Modem settings in Control Panel.
My friend is the sole user and has Admin rights. Again, he can surf to and
through any site, it's the Uname/password thing that's got us stumped.
Again, I suspect some security setting deep in the computer.
Here's a synopsis of what we've done so far. Note: I don't live in the same
town as the user. As soon as you try something "secure", like a log in to
Hotmail, purchasing something, attemptin plane tickets this error says "Page
cannot be displayed" - at the bottom it says "Cannot find server or DNS
error". The error page replaces the page from which we invoke the secure
session. You can jump "back" to the source page. When the error comes up
it appears reliably/instantly - no waiting. I don't think that the server on
the other end is isn't even touched. Because I've even tried a completely
false username and password (with Hotmail for example) and the response is
the same every time with the same speed - instantaneous!
Checked for an bogus or erroneous proxy server setup - none found.
Tools - Internet Options - checked SSL 2 & 3 - were turned on, left them on.
Tools - Internet Opt - cleared cookies, temp internet files.
Help - About - Encryption set at 128 bit
Tools - Internet Opt - Content - Clear SSL state
Tools - Internet Opt - Content - Autocomplete - Hit 2 buttons - Clear
Forms/Passwords - No checks for any autocomplete functions.
Tools - Internet Opt - Security - All zones set to default vals. Then all
zones set to low, no help.
Firewall - No third party installed and not activated in XP Home
Brought up a command prompt and ran regsvc32 (xxxx) where "xxxx" is
substituted for several .DLLs including softpub, cryptdlg, initpki and a
half dozen I can't remember.
Ran sfc /scannow - found zero.
Rescanned with AdAware SE & SpuBot S&D - fresh ref files all around.
Norton AV - this sys was working fine with Norton AV fully config'd.
Updated pattern file installed via LiveUpdate today - rescanned with no
virii found.
Disabled all Norton and Symantec services and apps from starting.
Located and checked the hosts file. It looks OK with a single entry for
localhost at 127.0.0.1.
Mounted and installed FireFox Mozilla. Ran it. After about 1 second,
message comes on: "The connection was refused when attempting to contact
hotmail.com", or "..yahoo.com" or ".... {his bank}.com". Got nowhere with
it. It's completely blocked. Unfortunately, in order to get a connection,
we have to use AOL first which may be integral to this problem. Again, we
just don't know and, by the way neither does AOL or Dell's technical support
personnel. After trying all the above they drag out the standard, "Just
re-install XP" answer.
Established myself with a new user account with admin priv. Launched AOL,
same
result in AOL or IE.
Attempted a reinstall of IE. Located "IE.INF", right click, select install,
runs through OK, but no joy.
Posted this to the aol internal newsgroup - no response after two weeks.
Let's try another ISP. Tried a free trial of NetZero but as luck would have
it, we can't get past the username/password feature there even though with
NZ on the line (cell phone) resetting the pword failed to get results. They
gave up and said, "Go back to the computer manufacturer".
You folks are pretty adept at suggesting things. I'm going to kick myself a
good one if it's something dirt simple. How 'bout it anyone?
Thanks.
H
