Expert: Saed Shawwa - 8/17/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hello Saad,

My Internet Explorer 8 stopped working for some reason a couple of weeks ago, the first error message I received was that the website could not connect to the HTTP or something, the last thing i tried to fix the problem was to do a  system restore to a previews date of the problem, all this time I have had internet I can use other applications, I also tried deleting cookies, reseting my IE and now I only get the following error message "Internet Explorer cannot display website". Could you help me? or guide me to some other expert that can, Thanks a lot!!!

ANSWER: Hello Adraiana how are you doing

too many thing can cause IE8 to behave like that so i need more information please if you do not mind


can you browse using other browser such as firefox or opera or google chrome ?  if not  try that to make sure its only internet explorer problem and not a system problem
goto www.mozilla.com and download firefox 3.5.2 and install it and run it and see if its working

other things to check is goto control panel then windows firewall and turn it off and try to browse using internet explorer

other things to do is open IE8 and goto internet options and goto "connections" tab and click on "lan settings" uncheck "automatically detect settings" if its checked also uncheck " use a proxy etc.."  and try to browse with IE 8

if you have any internet security suites turn them off and see if you can browse using internet explorer 8

let me know how it goes so we can go into deep solutions

take care


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi again, how can I download firefox if I don't have any other internet browser? I do know I have internet on my computer because I can download music through limewire for example. I also tried what you mentioned all firewalls are off, the LAN connection is all unchecked, but that didn't work either. IE says nothing is wrong, it can not identify the issue, it just says it can't display the website (no matter the site I enter). Any suggestions? thanks again

Answer
Hello Adraina how are you doing

well this is a weird problem if it has nothing to do with firewall and internet connectivity is present in the system and you had reset the settings to defaults then it could be a software that is preventing IE8 to work properly or to connect

try to uninstall your anti virus system and reboot , then reset IE8 again and see if it works " that happened once with norton anti virus and avg and kaspersky anti viruses"

other thing is you need to download the IE8 setup for vista once again from any other computer and copy it on a cd or flash drive then completely reinstall IE8 to refresh the files.
also from another computer download malwarebytes anti malware from www.malwarebytes.org and install it on your system and run a quick scan to make sure that there are no malwares preventing IE8 from working correctly.

one last thing which it could be stupid and im sure you checked it make sure that IE8 is not working under offline mode by opening IE8 and clicking on tools and then make sure " work offline" is not checked.

let me know how it goes , im going to dig deep to find a solution if non of the above worked.

take care and good luck.