Question

IE6 wont submit searches to google or yahoo (page brought up but submit does nothing). Wont redirect to technet. Cant login at hotmail. Netscape 4.7 however works fine. Javascript enabled (confirmed).

Asked by: asdavey

Hi,

This is a curly one. Basically something on the computer is telling IE what sites it can and can't go to. Sort of like a virus. The problem was first noticed when the laptop in question was moved from one domain to another. Everything went fine until I went to search for something on google. The google website came up, I entered in my search terms etc and pressed enter - nothing happened. So I pressed the submit button - still nothing happened.

Initially I thought that javascript must have been turned off - but it hadn't. So then I went to our companies website which I know uses javascript for logins etc and I didn't have any problems. So I thought that google was having problems. So I went to Yahoo to do my search - again the same thing happened - I could enter in my query but my search didn't do anything. The little windows flag (in the top right corner) didn't move a muscle. So I tried to do a search on lycos - there I had no problems - I could search away to my hearts content.

So then I tried to lookup this problem on technet. Normally when I go to technet I type in www.microsoft.com/technet which then redirects me to the proper site. This time it did nothing. Yet when I typed in support.microsoft.com I was able to search the knowledge base. This was the first time that I noticed that the browser was doing funny stuff irrespective of javascript.

So I installed Netscape 4.7 and low and behold I had no problems going to any of the above sites and performing searched etc.

Because I thought that maybe I had done somethign horribly wrong when I changed the domain the computer belonged to I decided to do a system restore (to the one that I had made earlier). When I did this and logged back on to the previous domain, I had not problems at all. YET when I logged on to the computers local domain IE demonstrated the same behaviour.

So I did two complete virus scans using Symantec's online scanner and McCaffee's Virus Scan - nothing was found. I then used Lavasofts Ad-Aware to see if there was some sort of trojan etc grabbing my search text and forgetting to forward it on to the appropriate website - again nothing was found. I even viewed the source of googles front page and compared it with that downloaded from another computer on the same network that uses the same gateway to access the internet and found them to be exactly the same.

Other things that I have tried - check to see what security zone IE thinks im in on these websites (all internet zone). Made sure that no sites were listed in any zone (like say restricted). Reset all settings (to the best of my knowledge) to their defaults. Delete all tempory files and cookies etc.

What do I think's happened. I think that there is some pluggin that has infected IE and is catching the requests to certain sites and not forwarding them on to the gateway/web server. Note that Netscape has never demonstrated this problem - which to my understanding tends to suggest the problem lies closer to IE than say a system infection. I did use msconfig to set the computer to restart without processing the startup items and win.ini etc etc.

Other things that I have noticed - I can't go to www.google.com/nfr (whether I type it in, click on a link in an email that I sent myself or click on the link off the google website). (when I go to www.google.com I get redirected to www.google.com.au). I can however go to www2.google.com and www3.google.com.

The computer specs are:

  Dell Inspiron 8500
  P4 2.4G, 512 MB, 40GB
  Windows XP SP1

  Windows updates applied each week.
  McCaffee virus definitions updated each week.

What is my question? How do I fix this problem ;-) It's very annoying and alarming (I don't want other computers catching whatever this one's got).

Thanks heaps in advance,

Andy

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Asked On
2003-08-27 at 16:52:15ID20722100
Tags

redirect

,

google

,

ie6

,

wont

Topic

Windows XP Operating System

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: war1Posted on 2003-08-27 at 17:02:09ID: 9236630

Greetings, asdavey!
   Do a search for the HOSTS (without extension) file. See if there is something there that is preventing Google or Yahoo from working.

Check your IE Search settings.  With IE open, go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced. Scroll down to Search and make sure either "Just display the result in the main winodw" or "Just go to most likely site" is checked. Chick OK. Close all browsers.

------------------------------------------------------------
Check for virus and adware

Housecall Online Scan
http://housecall.antivirus.com

SpyBot S&D searches your harddisk for so-called spy- or adbots;
http://security.kolla.de/

or

Adaware
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Best wishes, war1

 

by: mdiglioPosted on 2003-08-27 at 17:04:19ID: 9236641

Hello,

Perhaps the 1st thing we should do in this situation is to make sure your computer is free from spyware

download adware from this site:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/

or you can download spybot at :
http://spybot.safer-networking.de/

both of these utilities work great and are easy to setup and use.

The second thing to try would be to comapre group policy results from both of your locations.
to do this click start >> run >> type cmd click OK >> at the prompt type gpresult

Worth a try since it only happens in IE and that is the only browser you can control through group policy

Let me know if you hve any questions

 

by: mdiglioPosted on 2003-08-27 at 17:06:06ID: 9236649

ok War1,
this is my last apology for doing that!
from now we'll just make it understood.

 

by: spiderfixPosted on 2003-08-27 at 17:30:13ID: 9236761

HiJackThis will scan for BHOs and other attached unwanteds.
http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/

Spybot (already mentioned) will show the Hosts file in the Tools section.

 

by: KenneniahPosted on 2003-08-27 at 17:44:26ID: 9236831

You can also go to tools, internet options, settings under temporary internet files. Then hit view objects and see if anything weird shows up in there.

You can also try reregistering some dlls in the form of:
regsvr32 urlmon.dll
regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 Msjava.dll
regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll
regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 Mshtml.dll
regsvr32 Browseui.dll
regsvr32 Shell32.dll

You can try doing a repair install of IE as shown at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;318378

 

by: KenneniahPosted on 2003-08-27 at 17:46:18ID: 9236841

Hmm, come to think of it we did have a similar problem once and we ended up deleting the account for that computer from the proxy server and recreating it. Took care of the problem right away. Who knows if it'll work for you but worth a shot.

 

by: asdaveyPosted on 2003-08-27 at 18:59:06ID: 9237144

Ok I fixed it.

Basically when I went to download the spy bot sofware suggested by both war1 and mdiglio while logged into the account that wasn't having problems to my utter surprise this download manager software called StarDownloader started up! I had no idea that that was on this computer (something that I had neglected to ask and didn't notice during my foreys into the registry).

So I uninstalled the software, rebooted and volah (sp?) - logging into the local domain computer account didn't not produce the above mentioned problems.

Since this is my first post I'm not postive as to who I should award the points to. But I'm a generous man and if war1 and mdiglio hadn't suggested the spybot stuff then I may never have tried to download something on that account. Im going to split the points even but award the answer to mdiglio. Even though his link was to a german site that produced an error in german (I think its german and I think it was an error page), his answer seemed to take into account that which I had already said (tho both suggested that I download Adaware which I mentioned in my post that I had already done.).

Thanks to everyone for your quick responses. You have definetly made my first EE experience rewarding.

Cheers Andy

 

by: war1Posted on 2003-08-27 at 19:19:33ID: 9237220

Thanks for the points.

I know that an older version of Start Downloader can interfer with IE operations.  I use a newer version and have no trouble.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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