Stange IE behaviour - HELP!!!

Hello,
Something really strange has been ocurring for about a week now with IE. When I click on a link to go to a website more often than not it will get "The page can not be displayed ". When I click on "Back" and click the link a second time it always goes to the page ok. I have run the sfc /scannow to no avail - still does this. Any ideas?
Thanks - Gene

 

It sounds like a DNS failure - maybe just too slow so it fails the first time but when you retry it has enough time to do it's job. In that case, you are looking at an issue with your ISP or with your connection to the DNS servers your ISP operates.

How do you connect to the interenet? What OS are you running?

There are some utility things you can run to test for DNS issues but need to know the above to suggest the right ones.

 

Newt,
Connection is cable modem, and the OS is XP Home. Don't think it is an ISP issue because when all this is going on I can open another browser (Netscape) and it works just fine and Netscape has never done this. So it is something to do with IE.
Gene

 

Thanks. IE may have been banged around by spyware or similar.

Download Hijackthis and save it to a folder other than temp or desktop (maybe create an antispyware folder or c:\hjt or something).

Run Hijackthis and a couple seconds after it finishes, click on the button to save the log. It should open in notepad when you do. Paste the entire thing into this thread.

Don't fix anything at this point but just put the log up for a look-see by one of the security pros.

 

Newt,
Have been using Hijack This, AdAware, Start Page Guard, etc. for a long time now. There is nothing there and these programs (except HiJack This) are run on a daily basis.
Gene

 

At this point it does sound like an app issue of some sort with IE.

Simple solutions first. start~run~sfc /scannow.

If the problem persists after that, start~run~eventvwr.msc and check your event logs for clues. I like to filter out the 'normal stuff' so I uncheck Success Audit and Information so all I see is errors and warnings.

 

Newt,
I had already run the sfc /scannow. I also ran the eventvwr.msc you suggested, and the only thing that was fairly recent was a fault in mshtml.dll Version 6.02800.1400 with a fault address of 0x0000676d which is an IE dll. This only occured one time in the list.
Gene

 

Genestoy--How often is this happening? All sites or just a few?
What happens if you click Refresh when you get the first "page cannot be displayed" message?
I presume your Windows OS is XP, correct?
Repair IE?
There is an alternative to sfc /scannow. See at the bottom of
http://help.att.net/docs/howto/othe...ustomercontent=customer_browser&platform=none
Have you installed the latest updates for IE from Windows Update? There was an update last autumn that had a bug which did indeed impede access to Internet sites. A patch has subsequently been issued on the WU site.
And, since I do not run WinXP, it is easy for me to recommend System Restore.

 

Jim,
When it is doing this it is all websites that I try to go to. Today it only happened once that I know of, yesterday and the day before it was almost every website that I went to. I usually just go back and hit the link again and it always goes on the second try. Yes I am running Win XP Home. Maybe Newt was right, it may be the ISP (Cox Cable), because it does not do it all the time.
Gene