cannot get on any websites

[charlie1]

Can anybody please help! A friend of mine is having problems getting onto websites, she just gets that page saying "page cannot be found" This is happening abort 90% of the time.

using internet explorer 5
on freeserve.
thanx in adavnce for any info

[Confused]

Check Tools, Internet options, privacy tab and see what setting she has. I run mine at medium.
Chas

[kilowatt1]

Hello Charlie1,

Sounds like they have a corrupt hosts file. Have them go to: Start/Find/Files-folders. Type hosts You will find one or more listed without extensions. Right click on them and either rename them to host.old or simply delete them. DO NOT ALTER ANY FILES THAT HAVE AN EXTENSION SUCH AS "hosts.sam". Restart the computer and try opening the affected pages. (Windows will recreate new files automatically for "hosts". Hope this helps.

KW1

[Kubie]

kilowatt1,
What if you have only hosts.sam files and no others?
Carl

[kilowatt1]

Oops!

I should have said if you have "hosts" (without extension). Not all ISP's create this file. The host.sam file is a sample file. To view the sample file click on the hosts.sam and open with wordpad.

If a hosts file is not listed, the next option would be to delete the files in the History, Temp. Internet, and Cookie Folders.

KW1

[mairving]

The most likely cause of not being able to find any websites would be that your DNS settings are either wrong or the DNS server is down. So I would verify that those settings are correct. Also it would help to diagnose the problem if we had some more info like, what kind of connection?, are you running a firewall, router, etc?

The hosts file on your system just overides any DNS settings that the ISP provides. The hosts file is not created by any ISP's. It is a Windows file on your system that is a carryover from Unix's /etc/hosts. It is unlikely to be the hosts file since it usually only causes you to not be able to get on a site or two not 90% of the sites as you mentioned.

[azscary]

I have also seen this problem corrected by deleting the Internet Explorer Temporary Internet Files and offline content in TOOLS>INTERNET OPTIONS then resetting the allocated hard drive storage space in Internet Options to 10MB instead of whatever absurdly large value Windows uses. Deleting the cookies could eliminate a corrupt cookies file too. As was previously posted, DNS settings, ESPECIALLY for an ISP with LOTS of POP's nationwide is important. This problem is more common in Internet Explorer 5.0 and earlier. Also check to see if Internet Explorer is in the Add/Remove Programs list. If you have version 5.0 or higher there is a repair option in Add/Remove Programs. If you cannot find Internet Explorer in Add/Remove Programs that is not good and is usually due to it being bundled with other software by some third party vendor. If that is the case the only alternative may be to go download a more recent version and install it.
By the way, resetting the hard drive space alloted to Temporary Internet Files to 10 MB will drastically improve the performance of Internet Explorer AND YOUR EMAIL PROGRAM TOO!

[Donald]

Hi! Charlie 1!
About 16 months ago,I to,had a problem something like this.I called MS Tech Support.After an hour,she it on this.We were on a boot up floppy disk at the time.From an A: Prompt we typed in scanreg/fix I took out the disk and rebooted and went to the Internet and,BINGO!,the pages were displaying.I was a happy camper.Back then, I knew VERY little about computers.Will this help you,just don,t know-------------Donald

[charlie1]

Thanx Everybody. I will be trying these tips out later and will let you know how it goes.

charlie