Certain sites not opening on XP

Owen

Hi all,

Hoping you can help me out. I recently did a wipe ansd fresh install of XP Home SP3 on herself's laptop, but it's really misbehaving when it comes to opening certain sites. It's not the browser, both IE, and Firefox are affected, but she's having problems like not being able to complete secure transactions on AIB/Aer Lingus, having long delays with hotmail, and on facebook some pages just won't load - and she can be logged into FB on my laptop at the same time with no problems.

I've updated all network drivers, and also updated Java, and all the browsers too.

The laptop is spyware/adware and virus free, so I'm just wondering where to start? Could it be DNS related? It shouldn't be, we both use the same wireless router, and we both have automatically assigned IP's and DNS servers. Really hoping the boards.ie gurus can give me a dig out on this one, the laptop's perfect otherwise, and she's using it as an excuse to buy a new one - money that could be spent on man stuff instead

iceax

ya have had the same problem too, seems its my provider ?? somehow !!

have you tried to zend2.com then place your link in here . works for me

Owen

It's not the service provider, as stated in my OP, I am using the same router in the house and my laptop is fine on the same sites.

Owen

Anyone, anyone, bueller?

docmol

Need more info to help. Is the xp install from a recovery disc or from an xp disc? Have you tried the problem sites with firewall off? What anti-virus software are you using? Have you tried these sites with av software off? Have you fully patched laptop? Why did you wipe/reinstall in the first place? Is the RAM tested and good? Sorry but so many variables, if I had the pc in front of me I would just play with it. Try booting from an ubuntu disc to see if problem is hardware or software.

Owen

It's from a clean XP disc. The only reason I reinstalled the laptop was because everything was so slow with 5 years of installed apps, spyware which had been installed, deleted, and far too much crap altogether. The anti-virus is avast, the firewall is windows firewall on default settings. The machine has all the latest xp updates for it's hardware from the manufacturer (Hp Pavillion ZV6000)

Just to confirm, I don't think it's hardware, as the laptop was working fine before the reinstall - just dog slow. Now it's superfast, just super unreliable too

docmol

Was SP3 on the original xp install?

Owen

She had SP2, I only had an SP1 xp home install disc lying around, so I used that, and then downloaded SP2 and SP3.

docmol

sp3 has been linked to some dodgyness with ie, maybe try uninstalling sp3 and see if the problem resolves. Instructions for same: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950249

Owen

Cheers, willl try that. Thanks for taking the time to fault find!!

docmol

No prob, SP3 is known to have issues with amd chips so it is definitely worth a go. Must have man toys!!

kippy

docmol wrote: »

sp3 has been linked to some dodgyness with ie, maybe try uninstalling sp3 and see if the problem resolves. Instructions for same: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950249

Unlikely that is the issue, considering Firefox is also causing issues.
I've rarely come across issues with XPSP3 and IE to be honest, but I suppose it could have been a corrupt SP install.....


Can I ask whether most of the sites you are having issues with being with HTTPS in the address bar? (some of them seem to secure sites from what I am seeing in your original post)

Is there any firewall running on the device you connect through to get out to the net? Something could be configured there to allow limited access to certain MAC addressed PC's.
You could rule this out by connecting the troublesome laptop directly to the modem (if you have that option)


Theres some stuff here for troubleshooting but since the issue is also happening in Firefox it may not be relevant
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/870700

kierank01

is your hp machine an AMD or Intel?

there were a lot of problems installing sp3 on OEM versions of xp for Intel machines that had been installed on AMD machines.

these problems seemed to be more related to crashing and re-booting tho'

kippy

kierank01 wrote: »

is your hp machine an AMD or Intel?

there were a lot of problems installing sp3 on OEM versions of xp for Intel machines that had been installed on AMD machines.

these problems seemed to be more related to crashing and re-booting tho'

These problems were only with the initial install and I believe they fixed the bug in SP3 that caused this.....The machine would generally blue screen and crash constantly. I dont think its the cause of this issue.

Owen

It's an AMD processor, thankfully it's nearly done uninstalling SP3 now, so I'll have more to report in a short while. Thanks a million for the input guys.

Owen

I'd no luck after downgrading the SP3 to SP2, so I'm going to run some diagnostics on the hardware now just to be sure (Still think it's software as the problems just cropped up after a reinstall). I'm also going to flush the dns using 'ipconfig /flushdns', and switch off everything like firewalls/virus protection temporarily to verify if anyone of those is causing it and then reinstate them one by one.

docmol

post back when you've done that and let us know how it went. have you tried the dodgy sites in compatability mode?

Owen

I did a dns flush, a winsock rebuild, installed a different antivirus (Avira), and it started working a little bit better. What seemed to work wonders was uninstalling the skype plugin for Mozilla.

Not sure if it's 100% yet, but she's in the process of testing it as we speak.

kippy

If no better can you answer the questions I asked above?

D Audio Tripper

PaintDoctor wrote: »

I did a dns flush, a winsock rebuild, installed a different antivirus (Avira), and it started working a little bit better. What seemed to work wonders was uninstalling the skype plugin for Mozilla.

Not sure if it's 100% yet, but she's in the process of testing it as we speak.

I only installed Skype a few days ago, my laptop is fairly new. Anyway I noticed some strange things going on since. After a google search all the links from the results are dead - the page's won't open unless I right click 'open new tag'... About half the links in Facebook wouldn't work, then I noticed last night through Gmail my video-chat option was gone??
My mate is in America and when he tried to a get a video chat going it was saying I was un-available.
Also my laptop slowed right down, it was using 80-90% CPU usage just sitting there with firefox open and if I closed that or IE, it was still using about 40-50% under my 'processes' and not showing up as even being open under 'applications'
Anyway I un-installed Skype last night and everything is back working perfect now....
To the OP - Did you install that add-on yourself to firefox or does it do it automatically when you download Skype because I certainly didn't download that add-on myself so afaik it wasn't on my laptop!!!

Also I've had problems on my old laptop with certain sites not opening like the OP and it ended up being a proxy problem

Owen

Skype installed the plugin itself, and was the cause of all the problems. The laptop is working perfectly now, my symptoms were exactly the same as yours DAT, glad to hear someone else got to the bottom of it!

kippy

Just checked google there and seen that there are a number of results relating to issues with a skype plugin to firefox. Cant figure out why it would effect IE though, unless the addon for IE has issues as well.
Anyway good to know about this particular issue.