Laptop not getting online, but it's online

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 10:40 am

My girlfriend's laptop isn't able to get to the internet. firefox does nothing, IE does nothing. she gets an ip address, i successfully pinged google, but nothing shows up in the browsers. the itunes store works perfectly fine, but nothing in her internet browsers.

it started when i tried to upgrade firefox. she was still running 2.***, and so i downloaded 3.0.3, installed it, and after that, it all went to crap. system restore did nothing, reboot did nothing.

i'm about to put hijackthis! and registry mechanic, and just clean house, but i'm stumped as to what the problem could be and any other fixes.

she's running an HP laptop with vista home premium 32-bit. cpu is an intel T2080, 1 GB of RAM. she didn't have service pack 1 installed, i thought i had installed it, but it's not showing as having SP1 in the computer properties.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 10:49 am

You probably should rerun Internet Connection Wizard just to be sure (if that's even still around in Vista)...

Then there's the classic reboot. I can't think of anything else at the moment to help you.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:40 am

i only found 2 issues with hijackthis!. registry mechanic is only really good at making the system a little snappier, which it did.

i downloaded the standalone SP1 on a different computer and transferred it. now that's installing. i'm hoping SP1 can magically fix this.

could it be an issue with the HOSTS file? that's something that can just be deleted and it regenerates, right?

the part that bugs me the most is that the itunes music store gets through and works just fine.

EDIT: after SP1 installs, i think i'm also going to flush the DNS

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:07 pm

sweener2001 wrote:the part that bugs me the most is that the itunes music store gets through and works just fine.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:27 pm

sweener2001 wrote:could it be an issue with the HOSTS file? that's something that can just be deleted and it regenerates, right?

you should be able to open the hosts file in notepad and delete everything that doesn't have a # before it

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:54 pm

SP1 is installed, i did a DNS flush, and deleted all lines in the HOSTS file without a #. Still no go.

Windows Network Diagnostics recognizes an error, but says that it can't be repaired automatically. it also says that "www.microsoft.com is not set up to establish a connection on port 'World Wide Web service (HTTP)' with this computer."

in IE, when i go to set up a connection, it says that i'm already connected to the internet. i also deleted the VPN settings, since those aren't needed anymore, but nothing. also, ping www.google.com is successful with 4 of 4 packets sent and received. an average time of 90ms, even.

would sticking a different browser help at all? i'm running out of ideas, short of a reformat.

EDIT:spybot also connects and is able to run its update. except the insaller to take it to 1.6. updates within the program do work. the antivirus cannot. it's a norton client that the campus provides for free.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 5:25 pm

check for proxy servers?

whicker · Post by **whicker** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:21 pm

turn ON windows firewall for that connection?
(If it was XP, i'd rightly say turn it off, but Vista is screwy).

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:11 am

no proxy servers, and none needed. tried toggling the firewall.

did a factory restore. backing up data only took twenty minutes or so, it's working now. my friends and i are convinced it was a virus of some kind.