Page cannot be displayed for certain websites (Window XP, IE 6)

[Guest]

I'm running Windows XP home editon with IE v
I had recently installed the window xp patch against sasser worm. Are also running avast 4.0 anti-virus and Ad-aware 6.0 on my PC. I have found that certain websites that I could access previously, now gave error 'page cannot be displayed.....cannot find server or DNS error". Examples are www.mcafee.com, www.symantec.com, and more. Some others would allow me to the homepage, but any links clicked from the homepage will give above error

In particular, I could get to www.symantec.com.sg, but launching subsequent links from within this homepage (e.g http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.gaobot.aje.html, http://www.symantec.com/region/sg/enterprise/maintenance_renew.html, etc) will end with the above error
Yet, from this homepage, I could launch links like http://www.symantec.com.sg/region/sg/purchase/ and www.symantecstore.com

I tried out above problem links using Netscape, it also fail to access, giving error 'connection is refused when trying to contact www._______.___

Any advice on what to rectify this problem? thanks.

 

[Plato]

I'm running Windows XP home editon with IE v6
I had recently installed the window xp patch against sasser worm. Are also running

Hopefully you didn't install the "patch" that came attached in an email
from "microsoft".

 

[Guest]

----- Plato wrote: -----

Hopefully you didn't install the "patch" that came attached in an emai
from "microsoft".

No, I downloaded the security update patch (WindowsXP-KB835732-x86-ENU.exe) from Microsoft download Center.

 

[Malke]

No, I downloaded the security update patch
(WindowsXP-KB835732-x86-ENU.exe) from Microsoft download Center.

Check your hosts files as follows:

1. In XP's Search preferences, set the files and folders handling to
Advanced, and then check the box that will make Search look in hidden
files/folders.
2. Now enter the search term "hosts" without the quotes.
3. You will get several hosts and lmhosts files. Double-click each one
to open it. When you do this, you'll get a Windows dialog box saying
that Windows cannot open this file, do you want to use the web or
select from a list to find the proper program. Choose "select from a
list" and highlight Notepad. Make sure the box to always use this
program to open this type of file is not checked.
4. Now carefully examine the file. Lines that begin with a # are
comments and don't count. Leave them alone. Unless you know you use a
proxy server to get to the Internet or you added entries yourself, the
only uncommented entry that should be there is:

127.0.0.1 localhost

If you see any other entries, delete them and Save the file. Make sure
you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the window if there is a
scrollbar. Do this for each file you found.

If that didn't solve the problem, please repost.

Malke

 

[Guest]

You are right! Malke

Thru the search, I found file 'c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts' contain those problem URLs plus some others (all bear prefix 127.0.0.1). This file looks odd as it starts off with many blank lines at the top. After I commented out all the non-blank line entries and save the file, I could access those problem URLs now. Thanks a million!

 

[Malke]

You are right! Malke.

Thru the search, I found file 'c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts'
contain those problem URLs plus some others (all bear prefix
127.0.0.1). This file looks odd as it starts off with many blank
lines at the top. After I commented out all the non-blank line
entries and save the file, I could access those problem URLs now.
Thanks a million!

Woohoo! Excellent! I'm glad it worked for you. Now make sure your
computer is spyware-free by scanning with with Spybot Search & Destroy
from www.safer-networking.org and Ad-aware from www.lavasoftusa.com. Be
sure to update these programs before running them. These programs are
free, so run them both since they complement each other. It is best to
run antivirus and spyware removal tools in Safe Mode. You may also need
to run CWShredder from http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html .
Please read the instructions carefully. A great resource for dealing
with spyware is http://www.spywareinfo.com.

Thanks again for letting me know this story had a happy ending. ;-)

Cheers,

Malke

 

[Dave B]

I'm having all these same problems. How do you get into the HOSTS file to
see it's contents? Thx
Dave B