Help! Internet Explorer

PigginSkint

Hi All

Internet Explorer on our laptop at home is not playing ball! (I am having to post this from my computer at work)

This started yesterday evening and has continued today – Tuesday evening was the last time I was actually able to do anything!

There doesn’t seem to be any problem with the Internet connection itself, and the home page seems to load nearly every time (although OH reports that this has definitely been hit and miss today).

What happens is either once you get to the homepage (MSE naturally!) and then try to go to another site you get ‘Not Responding’ or a dialogue box comes up saying ‘Internet Explorer has stopped working properly’ and then there is box to click on saying ‘Close Program’ or sometimes it just closes itself down.

This was happening all yesterday evening and I did try restarting the computer and also completely shutting the computer and restarting.

Can anyone suggest what might be going on and what I can possibly do to resolve it?

(I have suggested to OH that he tries to speak to my brother for ideas and also the shop where we bought the laptop from – which also does repairs)

All help gratefully received!

Cool_Mint

It could be the weather affecting the phone lines but switch off your modem/router for 1 hour to see if it is overheating. Also check for silly faults like a damaged phone wire - it's easy to accidentally kick them.

BTW, check you're not in "offline mode" when you're on the home page. Offline mode will show you a saved webpage when you're actually not on the internet, it very confusing and I don't know why they design browsers to do that.

bwd

Very doubtful that even if the weather is affecting your line it would throw up an IE error message like this.

Its usually caused by some sort of software conflict. Have you installed any new software around the time you started experiencing the trouble.

If so uninstall and see if that helps

Also try uninstalling and reinstalling internet explorer or if you have access to another PC download a different browser such as Firefox, Opera or Chrome and install on your pc and see if that works

PigginSkint

Thanks for the suggestions - I will try some of these when I get home tonight.

I am going to try one more experiment later. DS will have his own laptop later on this evening ( he was at his Dad's last night so his Dad will drop it off later). I have asked him to try to see if he has any problems connecting to the Internet or not.

aliEnRIK

Download MALWAREBYTES (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/
Open malwarebytes and goto UPDATE and click 'check for updates'. After its updated goto SCANNER and click PERFORM QUICK SCAN then click SCAN
Remove everything thats found (needs to be ticked)
Post the COMPLETE log here AFTER youve deleted everything it finds
If anything was found then do the exact same but run a FULL scan

reboot
Download HIJACK THIS (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/
Click MAIN MENU then DO A SYSTEM SCAN AND SAVE A LOGFILE(Takes seconds) then post the log so we can see whats running
(do NOT do anything else with Hijack but scan and post the FULL log)
If you get a message that you cant write to the hosts file then Press the SHIFT key, and whilst holding it RIGHT CLICK and select RUN AS (admin)

PigginSkint

Thanks everyone for your help. I have managed to solve the problem by changing my browser to FireFox - bye bye Internet Explorer!

bwd

Believe me you wont want to go back to Internet Explorer.

In my opinion Firefox gives a much better (and faster) browsing experience and has some really cool add-ons.

aliEnRIK

Changing to firefox may only be a temporary fix if the machines infected

[Deleted User]

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Changing to firefox may only be a temporary fix if the machines infected

The OP's problem doesn't sound like a virus, it sounds like normal old internet explorer to me.

Make sure you update your PC to latest version, as that includes Internet Explorer 8.

Browntoa

this will reset internet exploror for you

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737

but I would also follow Riks advice to make sure the PC is clean

aliEnRIK

[quote=[Deleted User];39028146]The OP's problem doesn't sound like a virus, it sounds like normal old internet explorer to me.

Make sure you update your PC to latest version, as that includes Internet Explorer 8.[/QUOTE]

You may be right. But not even looking into a possible virus infection is daft to my mind.