Test results

[bobby123]

As you lot know due to some of my threads ive been having problems connecting to internet explorer or Msn. Hence i downloaded internet explorer 7 last night and i did a network diagnosis.

i got the following:
HTTP, HTTPS, FTP Diagnostic
HTTP, HTTPS, FTP connectivity

info FTP (Passive): Successfully connected to ftp.microsoft.com.
warn HTTPS: Error 12029 connecting to www.microsoft.com: A connection with the server could not be established
warn HTTP: Error 12029 connecting to www.microsoft.com: A connection with the server could not be established
warn HTTP: Error 12029 connecting to www.hotmail.com: A connection with the server could not be established
warn HTTPS: Error 12029 connecting to www.passport.net: A connection with the server could not be established
error Could not make an HTTP connection.
error Could not make an HTTPS connection.

Now it says windows cannot connect to the internet possibly due to firewall settings. I have norton in my pc, is this the root of all problems and what other advice would you lot give.

p.s. Also the colour of my internet seems to have gone dodgy with the installation of IE 7.

 

[Rick]

Yes, this is possible.

Not only is Norton 'nortorious' for causing issues, but the firewall could easily be blocking MSN, FTP and other traffic silently.

Disable your firewall and see if you have better luck. Better yet, uninstall Norton and try it. Uninstalling Norton is always risky though, because you never know what it might do during the uninstall process. :knock:

 

[bobby123]

out of interest rick where can i disable my firewall? Also if i did unistall norton what will save my pc from spyware etc

 

[Rick]

Here's some instructions to diable the firewall:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...36&nsf=nip.nsf&view=docid&seg=hho&lg=en&ct=us

You only need to do so temporarily, just for troubleshooting. Some people might argue this, but your computer is not going to blow up after being online for 5 minutes without a software firewall and AV. However, it is always possible to get something like Blasterworm if you're not up to date though.

Also if i did unistall norton what will save my pc from spyware etc

I can tell you that Norton is not protecting you from spyware. It's terrible at detecting spyware and adware. It's not bad for viruses though and the firewall is OK. But nothing about it is spectacular.

There's plenty of free (and even better) utilities to handle this kind of stuff.

AVG (anti-virus) - http://free.grisoft.com
Comodo anti-virus & firewall - www.comodogroup.com
Zonealarm (firewall) - www.zonealarm.com
Ad-aware (anti-spyware) - www.lavasoft.com
Spybot (anti-spyware) - www.safer-networking.org
hijackthis (anti-hijacker utility) - www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn

If you like Norton and it is working all right for you, then that is OK. I wouldn't hesitate to get rid of it at the first sign of problems though. I can't tell you how many issues I've seen Norton software cause over the years (and it has only gotten worse each year). But hey... if it works, don't fix it!

 

[bobby123]

omg im in such a bad mood now, i unistalled norton, went to control panel and set windows firewall to off and msn worked ok for like 10 mins and IE worked well for 10. And then it just went cant find server on IE and service temp unavailabe on msn!