Can't browse to HTTPS sites

[Shakedown 0]

I have a user who of course did not click on anything bad while browsing but all of a sudden she can't connect to HTTPS sites anymore. All other (HTTP) sites work just fine.

 

The error is the generic Can't find page or DNS error.

 

User has XP SP2 with all latest updates and is using IE.

 

I was going to try to reinstall IE but when I run IE6setup.exe from Microsoft I get a message that the installed borwser is newer than what will be installed so the install quits.

 

Anybody have any idea what could have caused this and possibly how to fix it?

 

I will be calling her again tonight to try HijackThis but nothing else is acting up on the PC. Everything else looks and works normally, she just can't get to HTTPS sites. I will also be looking into restoring her to a previous day when everything worked, but I can't depend on this.

 

Please don't tell me to install Firefox because IE sucks. I know IE sucks, but that is what people are used to and many resist change If all else fails I will try Firefox, but not until I have tried everything else. I would rather fix the problem than hide it. Who knows, it may mess something up later.

[DosFreak 2]

Usually I would say that whatever site that you are connecting to does not support https, for example if you connect to https://www.ntcompatible.com, you get an: "Cannot find server or DNS Error", because ntcompatible does not support https. W

 

I haven't gone through the technet documentation or anything yet to look this up but first guess would be that a hotfix may have broken it. You could start uninstalling hotfixes OR download firefox and test https sites. If those https sites work under firefox then it must be an IE problem and you could narrow it down to that.

[DosFreak 2]

Check this site out: http://www.duxcw.com/faq/win/xp/secure.htm

 

Oh, and thanks for making me contaminate my PC by loading up IE again. Now I'll have to reformat.

[Shakedown 0]

dosfreak,

Sorry, I should have been more specific. The sites are secure sites. Actually they are bank sites. The main page is not secure, but the link to log in is, that is where the error showed up. Works fine on any other PC, just not that one.

 

I found the exact same website and tried those but nothing worked.

 

Hope you didn't have too much valuable on that PC.

[peterh 1]

Try resetting Internet Options to default. Https uses SSL for encyption so if SSL is not enabled in IIS, you cannot browse to those pages.

 

See Internet Options, Advanced, Security, enable SSL 2.0 and SSL 3.0.

 

 

[Shakedown 0]

Well, The only thing that worked was a system restore. We restored to 2 days ago and all is well. I'm glad they didn't have much personal stuff on the PC.

 

Thanks for your suggestions. We may never know what caused this fiasco.

[DosFreak 2]

Glad you got it fixed!

[Dr. Data 0]

I have been struggling with the identical problem on one my home computers. A couple of days ago IE 6.0.2900 stopped going to https sites. Netscape 7.2 works just fine. Also the identical version of IE on my other Windows XP computer works just fine.

 

I checked the Intenet Explorer Options and they are identical between the two machines.

 

Any other places to look?

 

[galink 0]

I don't know if you've solved your problem yet but I had same issue with only certain sites and nothing helped. I finally found the solution here: http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp Download Dr. TCP

The first file listed (it is the latest)

Set the mtu on the nic (Network Card)to 1488 (middle section where it will show ppp adapter if you have a modem for dial up or select drop down to select your nic card)

Then reboot the computer

 

It fixed all my certain site access problems.

Hope this helps

[Dr. Data 0]

My https problem has been solved. I shut down the computer instead of just logging off and when I came back the next day, everything was working again. I have no clue why. Thanks for the help.