SOLVED: Connected to internet but can’t browse
After clearing up a virus, it’s not too unusual that you still can’t connect to the internet through your browser even though your computer is connected just fine to its network. For example if you open a command window, and type “ipconfig” you will see that you have a proper ip address (like 192.168.1.x). You can even ping sites, I usually use Yahoo for testing, by typing “ping www.yahoo.com” but still the browser returns something like “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage”. Frustrating.
I had this problem tonight on a customer machine and what was more frustrating was that my normal quick-fix didn’t work. Normally on an XP machine I can just run LSPFIX and the problem is solved, that works 90% of the time. If that doesn’t work, then I have used another Winsock Fix you can find here. Tonight though neither of those worked. Just as that bastard little voice in the back of my head was starting to tell me I was going to fail at fixing this machine, I remembered one really simple little trick that these viruses play – proxies.
As the little voice became louder and louder, “Steve, you’re not smart enough, you’re going to have to call your customer and admit it, everyone will think you’re a loser, your wife will leave you and your children will despise you…”, I opened Internet Explorer and did the following:
Tools/Internet Options/Connections/LAN settings
On the bottom half of the window, sure enough “Use a proxy server for your LAN” was checked and the LAN traffic was being proxied to port 555 on the laptop. I unchecked the proxy server and viola! this machine was back on the grid and that little voice was getting a fail enema.
