Internet Explorer won't open MSN page

Howdy,
I have a friend who has a Windows 2000 Pro...Her home page is MSN...When she clicks on Internet Explorer, it opens the MSN page okay...When she clicks on a site/link on the MSN page it syas "page can not be displayed "...She has done the patch work/bug fixes and that did not cure the problem...The town in which we live had their computer techs look at it and can not figure out the problem...Everything from what I have quickly looked at seems in order...Personally I think it's a connection problem but was looking to see if anyone has had this problem and if so, had did you solve it ? Any suggestions will be greatly Appreciated...Thanking you in advance...

 

Have you tried the Internet Explorer Repair tool?

http://www.theeldergeek.com/repair_ie6.htm

Do a general cleanup, delete cookied, temporary internet files and history.
Depending on the vesion of IE you may want to try an update or a reinstall.
You can right click on a link and choose open in new window.
Also make sure IE is the default browser.

 

Thanks for your reply...I believe that was all done, updates, patches, bug fixes, etc...But I will double check. As for the default browser, where she has the MSN set as her home page will that have any effect on her MSN page ??? To help make a clearer picture on whats behind the scenes, her computer is owned by a municipal agency and the town in which we live has what they call MIS director who has not been able to find a fix for this problem. I thought it was best to uninstall and then re-install and see if that fixes it but wanted to check here first...

 

Master Green--You say your friend has done the patches, etc. but one of the recent patches causes problems similar to those you report. You need a fix for the patch
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/813951/default.asp

 

You are right but in the updates there were several for the Windows 2000 Pro and she did those after (many days after) so I doubt the patch contributed. But like everything else I will double check...Again thanks for that info, the search continues...

 

Sounds like it could be a DNS problem somewhere (its happened to me a few times). MSN had a corrupt DNS server on one ocassion and actually stuffed my local DNS cache with bogus addresses which causes exactly the same problem you have. I could get to "microsoft.com" but not "www.microsoft.com ". Local caches will eventually time out (I hear) but the best way is to just clear the cache. To see the cache data, go to the command prompt ( start|run|open and type in CMD ) and then type "ipconfig /displaydns" (without the quotes, of course.)

C:\>ipconfig /displaydns

To clear the DNS cache type "ipconfig /flushdns "

C:\>ipconfig /flushdns

Good luck
Top Dog

 

Thank you and I will pass that along. I will get back to this post if and when it's attempted and let everyone know how it went...

 

I have not had the chance to see if there's any possibility of the DNS Server being corrupt, but she did call me and let me also know that when she was playing music on her computer, that after awhile it closed out her MSN page. I was curious if anyone thinks that, that problem may indicate a problem with the DNS Server also???

 

Master Green

That could be an entirely different issue. Many ISP's will close the connection after a certain period of "inactivity ". Listening to music is usually not considered activity. Neither, for example, is word processing while the connection to the Internet is on.
Or if your friend uses a dialup modem, the setting for "Disconnect a call if idle for more than..." on Control Panel|Modem|Properties|Connections tab may be the culprit.
If your friend is paying an ISP, they really should fix these problems, or she should consider switching ISP's

 

True and I agree. Thanks