The dreaded "This page cannot be displayed"

[Levi]

I am having a problem surfing to many pages. I use XP, the XP Firewall,
Webroot Spy Sweeper and Norton Anti-Virus 2005. On many pages, like in
Hotmail, there are urls that have banner ads display. Where these are
supposed to be, I get the blue explanation mark and the "This page cannot be
displayed" titled partial page.

I have uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus, Spy Sweeper, turned off the firewall,
but I cannot figure this problem out. I have also tweaked the Internet
Options in IE but cure this problem. I have Firefox on the computer too,
and it gets the same errors.

Can anyone help? (Thanks in advance)

TXLevi

 

[Dan DiNicolo]

There's a good chance that your anti-spyware program modified the HOSTS file
to stop banners from being displayed. You can check the file by opening it -
found in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Open it in Notepad. If you find a
whole pile of entries that point to the IP address 127.0.0.1, then this is
the issue. Simply remove all of the entries (except localhost) and then save
the file. That should do the trick.

Good luck,
Dan

 

[TXLevi]

Dan:

You were absolutely right. There must have been nearly 200 entries in
there. I guess this will be a repeat experience until somehow there is a
fix to that process. I'll keep your solution handy.

Happy New Year,
Levi

There's a good chance that your anti-spyware program modified the HOSTS file
to stop banners from being displayed. You can check the file by opening it -
found in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Open it in Notepad. If you find a
whole pile of entries that point to the IP address 127.0.0.1, then this is
the issue. Simply remove all of the entries (except localhost) and then save
the file. That should do the trick.

Good luck,
Dan

 

[Dan DiNicolo]

In many cases, it's actually for your own good - "spoofing" entries in the
HOSTS file is a great way to stop banner ads (some consider them annoying),
as well as being able to connect to malicious spyware/malware sites.

At any rate, you can selectively disable entries in the file by preceding
their line with a # sign as well. So, if you want to see Google ads, just
place a # sign in front of the Google-related entries...

Glad to help.
Dan