Internet Explorer problem, please help

[Louisa911]

I have Vista on my laptop, which is connected to the university internet service in my uni halls. Used to work fine for the last 5 months, but now on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, for example when I try to visit hotmail.com, or at certain points of the checkout process when buying train tickets on trainline website, or certain applications online, I get "internet explorer cannot display webpage", and similar errors with firefox and chrome. I can log into facebook etc fine.

I have to access my hotmail by signing into MSN messenger and linking from there. Earlier I tried to go about designing a cover for an Ipod with an online mail order design website, and upon clicking "create your own", the same happened. It only seems to happen with certain websites. I used to be running the trial of Mcafee but recently changed to Avast security program, but cannot remember if this problem occured at a similar time to me changing the security program.

Please help, its my boyfriends birthday coming up, need to do some online shopping and being at uni, this is the only internet access I have at the moment! Thanks

Edited by Louisa911 on Monday 22 February 00:12

[Paul Drawmer]

Have you installed a flash blocker or popup blocker? If so, try disabling then for the sites you are having difficulty with.

[ymwoods]

See I would have said something along the lines of Javascript or PHP being disabled with it mainly being on check-outs and what not but Facebook uses loads of this so it seems unlikely that this would be disabled...and even more unlikely over 3 browsers (since it would be an option on each individual browser)

It could be a flash problem (as mentioned above), have you tried playing on any of the Facebook flash games? give this a try and if they do not load then it is most likely flash.

I have had a problem like this before, though on a customers PC. We never actually found the root cause of the problem, but we did manage to get it working again by cleaning the pc of Viruses, Malware etc. The best programs for this are "Spybot-Search&Destroy" and Windows Defender which will either be already installed on your pc (but disabled) or easily downloaded from the Microsoft site for free.

If your still having problems give us a shout back.