I downloaded AVG Free antivirus and a program that loaded a list of known bad sites into my restricted site list. I connect to the internet with a dial-up connection. Now, when I connect to the internet, it connects but every site I go to sayes Page is unavailable. I have shut off everything running in the background and re-booted several times. I have talked to tech support for my ISP and they have no clue. I have uninstalled those programs and cleared my restricted site list. But still can't get a page to load.

Oh yeah, I am running IE6, and Firefox, and netscape. I get the same thing on all three, Page cannot be loaded. I have tried to run the IE6 setup but in the middle of the setup it tries to connect to the internet.

Did you check the list of the sites that are being restricted from being accessed?

I checked them and they all appeared to be legit. I deleted everything off of the restricted site list to see if that would fix it. It didn't.

check your HOST file

search your drive for file named host

sites can be "unreachable" by modifications to this file.

Rule #1 Good computers don't go down.
Rule #2 There is no such thing as a good computer.

It's actually hosts and has no extension. If you find it temporarily rename it to hostsx and see if this helps.

Before you do this go to Start/Settings/Folder Options/View.

Make sure you are set to "show all files" and NOT set to "Hide file extensions for known file types" (unless you want MS to hide this info from you). It makes life much easier.

DerekW

It's actually hosts and has no extension. It is in c:\windows. If you find it temporarily rename it to hostsx and see if this helps.

Before you do this go to Start/Settings/Folder Options/View.

Make sure you are set to "show all files" and NOT set to "Hide file extensions for known file types" (unless you want MS to hide this info from you). It makes life much easier.

DerekW

What do I do with the hosts file if it helps?

If that fixes it then just leave it the way it is.

Open dial up networking in 'my computer' and post back what shows. IE opening may be due to a AVG having installed a plugin there. Is so it's probably safe to remove it.

Restoring an older registry may help. Exit to dos and at the prompt type scanreg/restore and enter. Choose a registry to restore with a date that precedes your installation of the AVG software. (If it's been more than a few day a backup registry may not be available.)

ooops, sorry about double post - no idea
how I managed it.

DerekW

I checked and re-named my hosts file. Didn't help. I checked my dial-up networking, and the only thing there was my dial-up icon, no plugin. I tried to restore an older version of my registry but it doesn't go back to before my problem started. Any other ideas?

You might try the IE setup again. Do a CTRL-ALT-DEL and shut off everything except explorer. Or you may be able to do it from safe mode.

I've tried the IE setup. It tries to connect to the internet right in the middle, and it tells me it must connect to complete setup.

How are you doing IE setup - are you using a downloaded file? If not this might work better.

You can download it on some other machine like this:

CLICK HERE

Make sure you choose W98 as the option.

You will then need to burn it onto a CD-R to run on your own machine.

DerekW

I downloaded IE and re-set it uped. It didn't solve my problem. I am dumbfounded.

So am I.

Makes me wonder about that restricted sites program you downloaded. I wondered how legit it was, or whether it had built in some nasty or other. What was it called and do you have the website URL?

If you can see some way of getting some Anti-malware programs in (Ad-Aware and so forth) it might unearth something I suppose.

Have you tried scanreg /fix (a bit hopeful but as you can't restore an earlier registry its the next best thing)? The only other thing I can think of is to run some registry cleaner such as EasyCleaner.

DerekW