Why won't IE8 work?

[Maurice]

I am being driven crazy by a family member's laptop. It's a Toshiba Satellite L300 unit with Vista Home Premium running IE8. No matter what, I cannot get IE8 to connect to anything. I run an 802.11b/g wi fi network with two XP Compaq PCs and a G4 Mac Mini and a Wii and they are all happily working together and getting the internet. On the Toshiba, Windows Live Messenger is connecting to the net, as is Limewire but not IE 8. The network diagnostics tool says there is no problem with the internet connection, but when I run the diagnostic tool in IE8 it says that it can't help with this problem and to contact the administrator.

Grateful for any advice on my next course of action.

[qwerty01]

try google chrome

or maybe its a problem with ip addresses crashing

[Wolfwood]

Is Windows Firewall active, and has Internet Explorer been cleared in it?

[Bullfrog]

Try going into your control panel, clicking on network connections. Then right click local area connection. In the next menu, scroll down to TCP/IP and right click it. Go to properties and make sure that obtain an IP address automatically is checked. For some screwy reason when i installed IE 8 on a computer, it went and changed these settings, thus the inability to connect through any browser whatsoever even though the network was still functioning.

[Maurice]

Thanks for all your suggestions. I have not had any success with most of the tips. I have not tried Chrome but I have tried Firefox, to no avail. I have even added IE8 to the Windows Firewalll exceptions list.

Again thanks.

Maurice

[Bullfrog]

Okay try this click/start/run then type this in or copy & paste ipconfig /renew

Also have you checked in event viewer for errors?

[Bullfrog]

One more thing I have just spoken to someone who had the same problem after installing a MS Vista update KB961260 and after uninstalling that update the problem was solved.

[Bullfrog]

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... c857b46c3b

I just came across this while searching for you out of interests so have a look at the above link and see if anything there helps.

[Maurice]

Dear CNETers,
Thank you for all your suggestions. I have found what the problem was. It was an installation of Norton Internet Security on a Toshiba laptop that was causing the trouble. Although I had removed the program with the Windows Add/Remove Program application it did not do a full removal. That left the laptop stuck with half a trial version of NIS that would not let any browser work at all.

The solution was pointed out to me on another site, TechArena Community. It appears a number of times in different threads there. All I had to do was download the Norton Removal tool from the Symantec website. Run it then restart and the browser worked fine. The laptop belongs to my 15 yo niece who is over the moon that she is back on line.

[Bullfrog]

Nice to hear you have solved the problem....