Error 403 on every page

[dylan.fun]

This problem has me baffled. I'm very careful about Internet security,
and haven't installed any questionable software on this box that I know
of. I'm running Windows XP SP2, with patches applied until fairly
recently. The IE version is 6.0.2900.2180.

Internet Explorer had been working fine. Recently, though, I began
getting this message no matter what page I try to visit, including
microsoft.com, yahoo.com and all major sites:

HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden
Internet Explorer

This has also disabled Windows Update, and every program that uses the
Internet Explorer component.

The kicker is that Firefox works fine on the same computer. (I wish
every site was Firefox compatible!)

I've searched quite a bit for a fix, but haven't found anything except
possibly "registry cleaner" programs, which I'm reluctant to try due to
possible problems.

I have a certificate installed in IE that I don't want to mess with, so
I'd greatly prefer a solution that won't affect that.

Please help, I really need access to IE on this computer soon for
business reasons.

 

[Jon Kennedy]

See Jan's response to another poster here:

http://groups.google.com/group/micr...=HTTP+Error+403&rnum=5&hl=en#23d5344004b465fc

or - http://tinyurl.com/k52dv

 

[dylan.fun]

I realized what was causing this today. I'd set a proxy a while back,
then hadn't used IE for quite a while and forgotten about it. If the
error message had pointed out that the proxy wasn't responding, it
would have been much easier. Sigh.

Sorry to waste the bandwidth...