Internet Explorer Troubles

Good morning all,

Ok, so I'm working on a PC for a customer and I've hit a proverbial brick wall. I've Googled to my heart's content with no luck. Basically what is happening is IE8 is not properly functioning in that many pages just don't 'load' (I see "Done" in the bottom left corner, all webpage loading appears to have stopped and all I get is a blank page) and also links within a webpage don't work, when clicking and right clicking.

All of this occurred after she inadvertently installed a rogue bogus security suite. McAfee didn't stop it and she called their tech-support for help....two hours and $90 later, she had no anti-virus active on her PC, and 90% of the rogue security suite uninstalled.

I've followed all sorts of different procedures, all to no-avail:

• Reset IE8 deafaults
• Clear browser files
• Reset Security permissions
• Cleared SSL state (suggested because hotmail is a page that doesn't load)
• Re-registered softpub.dll
• Run Hijackthis, Malwarebytes, Spybot, Ad-aware, AVG, Unhackme, Rootkit Revealer, and CCleaner -- removed approx 800 infections (mainly tracking cookies and the sorts)
• Complete removal, via removal tool, of McAfee
• Ran browser in no-addin mode
• Tried browsing in Safe-mode

(*not in this particular order)

I think telling my customer to switch to a different browser seems like a half-a$$ed solution, although I am recommending switching to Firefox. I'd just like to fix this for her, so it works how she wants it to work.


TIA

Forgot to mention, this is Windows XP Media with SP3. And I also tried reinstalling IE8 to no-avail and then reverting to IE7 which still experienced the same issues.

Are you saying...that browsing is the only system problem?

And that all critical updates are installed?

Have you tried the sfc /scannow command or a repair install?

I guess I have to wonder...how did you determine that the system is (now) malware free?

Have you taken a look in Event Viewer for errors that might provide clues?

Louis

Almost forgot...I'd try another browser to convince myself that the NIC hasn't derailed.

Edited by hamluis, 04 November 2009 - 12:41 PM.

At the moment, browsing seems to be the only trouble.

All updates have been installed, with the exception if IE8 as of right now. When IE8 was installed, all the critical updates for it were installed as well.

I've done sfc /scannow, but not a repair.

i can't really say for certain that the pc is 100% malware free, but scanning it as a slave in my pc with numerous programs and removing infections and then scanning from the pc with all the programs listed above in safe mode and removing more infections, and then running all those scans a second time, they came out with no infections.

Event veiwer didn't show anything out of whack....but i'll double check.

Firefox seems to browse to webpages just fine.

(sorry for the tone, just been troubleshooting this for the past two days with no results, and it's frustrating, haha)

looking at a few other forums, it looks like there has been a number of similar issues that started occurring around Sept/Oct....all open threads with no fixes....but i haven't seen anything related on this forum.