os: Windows ME

my internet explorer cannot find any pages or websites. computer connects fine and ie comes up but then I get "page cannot be found". outlook express email will not connect to receive or send mail either.

this prob occurred a few days ago right after my yahoo messenger stopped working. I decided to uninstall and reinstall it, so I uninstalled it. Then I decided to clean out the cookies, temp int files, history etc. Since the computer was running very slow, I decided to see what else I could clean out to free up disk space so I removed some stuff I wasn't using from add/remove programs. while doing so, I removed two microsoft updates which I didn't think were needed there as windows updates occastionally. I think that might have been a mistake. I also ran spybot, ad-aware, spyblaster and norton antivirus. I then posted my HJT log to the HJT forum which came back clean.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling IE which didn't help. I installed netscape which had the same problem. Mozilla Firefox also had the same problem so I uninstalled that.

I called tech support and they couldn't figure out the prob either, got disconnected and couldn't get back with them.

HJT forum directed me here.

whenever I click on IE I get this message: "page cannot be found"

it connects ok, is online, but can't get anything and my outlook express won't connect to receive or send mail.

I called my isp and got tech support but got disconnected and couldn't get back with them, but they couldn't figure it out either.

it's not the isp, because I get the same prob when I connect with a different isp under a different account.

last attempt I got this message:

"windows is not currently set up to match your windows integration preferences. this means that windows will not use this application when you open all the types of documents and internet short cuts that you have indicated. do you want to update windows to match your windows integration preferences?"

to which I replied "yes"

to which I received this message:

"connection was refused when trying to connect to netscape"

"page not found"

Hi just have the same problem before.. try this i hope it works. go to tools then internet option then advanced tab and restore defaults.. well just message me here if it doesnt work.. another alternative is to reinstall the browser.

Have you recently uninstalled ZoneAlarm?

no, I never had zonealarm

Hi, I am having the same problem. I have ZoneAlarm on my PC. Could that be causing the problem? I had run an antivirus program which had deleted some things, so i was thinking maybe it deleted a .dll that I needed or something. I even tried reinstalling windows 2000 but that didn't work either. Any thoughts??

If you haven't resolved this yet, perhaps this will help.
It's a long shot, but yahoo recently changed the urls of some of their pages and the new ones appear to be wrong Page not found etc errors. If you have old shortcuts or favourites, try using them. It worked for me when I couldn't open my inbox there. I blamed ZA initially, then IE, but it really was not it. I don't use yahoo messenger, which is why I'm saying this is a long shot.

Thanks for the info, but unfortunately thats not it. I can't open any website at all. I still have no idea what the problem might be.

Are you set up to login to this computer with a user name and password? I'm having trouble finding much info about "windows integration preferences" but it seems to have something to do with permissions.

Take a look at this page. This seems to have something to do with seting Netscape as your default browser.

HTH

I finally got hold of someone at tech support who could help me after hours of trying different things to no avail. the prob was a setting in networking; control panel / network / tcp/ip properites / enable dns / entered last name in 'host', added dns numbers / ok / restart / yes. when I logged back in it worked just fine. I asked the tech how could the setting get changed and he said "sometimes someone changes something and doesn't tell anyone"... so I get the feeling the prob came from the server rather than my computer. something apparently got changed on their end.

just to let you all know the prob I had is finally fixed

Thanks for posting back z4955 and letting us know how you solved the problem. Sometimes you need to "think outside the box" and your experience proves this.