I installed a program to connect through a proxy some months ago on my laptop running vista home premium. the program includes a tool to set up firefox/ie's configuration settings with it. this worked fine until firefox updated (to 2.0.0.11) and thereafter refused to connect, it was, at the time, configured to run normally without the proxy. when reconfigured, it worked fine through the proxy, and no amount of uninstalling and reinstalling or examining the connection options would fix it. more recently, internet explorer(7) and everything else stopped working except through the proxy. no backup for system restore was made. lesson learned. windows network diagnostics find nothing wrong, and i've tried resetting ie's default settings. anyone know how to restore connectivity without the proxy?

Have you uninstalled the proxy program? Greg

After uninstalling the program, my connection issues were not resolved. presently, i have reinstalled the proxy, as without it i would have no internet access. i believe the issue is buried in a configuration file somewhere. any other ideas?

From your description, it seems that the proxy settings remain even after you uninstall the program and that's why you lose your internet connection. I had a similar problem. I don't know your exact setup, but generally after unistalling a proxy program I would have to reset my internet settings either manually or by running the network wizard. That's what worked for me after I uninstalled a proxy program I was using. If you're running a router, you may need to reset that as well. This should get your configurations back to default. If your isp had you set up your TCP/IP and/or DNS Server numbers manually, you'll have to do that again too. Hope that helps, Greg

I'm connecting to the internet at school, wired in the dorm and wireless everywhere else. I've had no trouble getting a connection, through the proxy i can always connect, i just can't get connectivity outside of the proxy. the lan settings in ie are set to connect automatically, as they've always been. i think that if i could get connection settings back to factory everything work, but the reset all option does not resolve anything, and i don't know how to access anything else. windows' network diagnostics wizard cannot find anything wrong. any other ideas? and greg... thank you very much for taking your time to help me. i'm dreading a vista reinstall if all else fails.

No problem vondeckerstein, First of all, can you get to the command prompt? If you don't know how, it's start>run or windows key + r, and type cmd. If you can, disable your proxy program. Then type ipconfig /flushdns Then type ipconfig /release Then type ipconfig /renew Reboot your computer and try to access the internet without the proxy. Greg

Sorry for the late reply, my girlfriend's been in town, and not very sympathetic towards any sitting on the computer for any length of time. Anyway, I ran /flushdns, /release, and /renew, and everything seemed to output correctly, once administrative privileges were secured, still nothing. When the proxy settings are reset to no proxy, there is no loading, it just immediately shows a "cannot find page." Any other ideas?