Installed SP2 now IE won't work and other access problems

mrbungle

Hi All,

I installed XP SP2 yesterday and I think something happened with the firewall. I'm not too up to speed technically but here's what I know:

So far when trying to access www.vodafone.ie in Netscape I get the vodafone webpage but cannot access my personal details when usr name and pswd entered. I checked the firewall and the on and off switch is greyed off and there is a msg saying that it is controlled by Group Policy, I'm at home not on a network. Have wireless router, nothing special.

Also, IE net access has stopped, access to the net by Netscape is no problem.

Any help appreciated !!

Tried a lot of fiddling and searching on the web for help but no joy.

Sudsy

hi there, am not positive, but this sounds a lot like a virus i had once, have you scanned for them? also spyware/ malware can cause these problems aswell!

An idea might be to go through the windows update to get any additional security fixes and add ons for ie!
HTH

mrbungle

I've scanned for viruses and spyware and malware regularly and nothing there.
I'd try re-installing XP but 1 major problem I reckon as I never got a CD to re-install when I bought the computer from PC World couple yrs back.

I've tried nearly everything. Got the latest updates from msn, maybe trying the SP2 installation again might work ?

Sudsy

it is worth a try.....

Cryos

mrbungle wrote:

I've scanned for viruses and spyware and malware regularly and nothing there.
I'd try re-installing XP but 1 major problem I reckon as I never got a CD to re-install when I bought the computer from PC World couple yrs back.

I've tried nearly everything. Got the latest updates from msn, maybe trying the SP2 installation again might work ?

Have you installed the microsoft anti spyware, it will check yoru system for errors and spyware that could be manifesting itself, turn off your system restore and run a scan then turn it back on again just to be sure.

Capt'n Midnight

Blitz wrote:

, turn off your system restore and run a scan then turn it back on again just to be sure.

another option if an NTFS drive is to take ownership and change permissions on \system volume information folder so scans can clean it.

If netscape is fine then networking is OK.

Didn't SP2 change security permissions ?
Perhaps add vodapone.ie to trusted sites to see if that solves it,

Because the WMF security hole had laid dorment for many, many years I'd recommend you look at Opera or FireFox too. Check if IE works on http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com, and apply all the latest patches anyway.


PC World - no XP CD - if you post the model of PC someone may know how to generate the image if there is one stored on the HDD.

thetourist

my first reaction would have been to undo the update with system restore - i *think* you can undo an sp2 update this way and it should put thingsback the way they were - it could have just been a plain old bad install - anyway if it allows you to do this then you can see if things are working and continue from there reinstalling the sp2 and see if it happens again - if it does then it's probably some kind of configurating with a firewall or something that you're doing wrong - otherwise you can always undo the restore and you havent really lost anything

have you tried the sfc.exe /scannow ( you'd need a windows xp disk but you could get a loan of one i suppose )

if you bought the pc from pc world you should have gotten an xp cd unless you have either a restore disk or restore partition - either one should sort you out if you want to reinstall

another idea is a bit hairy but you could run msconfig and temporarily turn of a load of startup items and services - if you manage to get things working then you can gradually turn the rest back on until you find the culprit - of course you would then have to discover why the offending object was causing trouble - you would have to read up a bit on what im saying here if you wanted to try it and didnt know how - im only being a bit sketchy

ps i suppose you'd try uninstalling your firewall before getting into reinstalling windows if you think that might be part of the problem