got a weird problem

[shugah]

hoping someone can help!

i've been getting "page cannot be displayed" messages since early this evening for sites that would be considered "sensitive, personal, (somewhat) financial" using IE. examples: my online banking , my paypal account - i know that details are important. so! i can access my bank home page but get the "page cannot be displayed" when i enter user name and password; any attempt to access paypal whether from bookmark or typing in url returns a "page cannot be displayed." also, i cannot access my ebay account using IE. any attempt to sign-in gives me the same "page cannot be displayed."

all above mentioned can be accessed using netscape (just for the record, netscape only is not an option for me because i rely on a couple of IE exclusive programs).

the only weird, different, unusual thing that happened today - i was corresponding via email relating to my business concerns, and quite unexpectedly, for no reason i can fathom, the font of all my outlook express email (past, current, and any that i was receiving or sending) changed to a smaller version of what i normally use. properties showed my usual defaults, but appearance did not match. i fixed this problem, and this whole outlook thing may or may not be relevant, but as mentioned, it was the only weird thing that happened today and preceeded the problems i am having now.

anyone have any ideas about what might be wrong?

[welshTerrier2]

1. a few ideas ...

not sure this will help but here are a few thoughts ...

first, it sounds like all the problem sites are using "https" which is more secure ... sites that have an "S" appended to the "http" are commonly used to transmit sensitive data back to your browser (e.g. financial sites) ... I believe they use a different "port" to communicate ... it sounds like there may be a problem between your browser and these sites ... not sure why it worked before and then stopped working ... perhaps some script that ran inside Outlook changed a setting somewhere ...

i gave this advice to another user and thought it might be worth a try for you as well:

in IE, click Tools/Internet Options ... then click the security tab ... if the "internet" security level is set to high, try moving it down to medium ... also, if it's just these 3 sites, click on trusted sites and then click the sites button and add the problem sites to the list ...

there could be a firewall problem that is blocking access to these sites (or sites in their path back to you) but it seems unlikely if you were able to access them just a few days ago ...

you might try contacting your isp for some guidance ...

not sure these tips will solve the problem but at least it's a place to start ...

[shugah]

2. thanks

welshTerrier! i did call my isp and it was something weird about encryption... i managed to get the main problem sorted out - but cannot seem to do any windows updates. the error message says something like "make sure crypto (???) something is on." any ideas?

is there a way to find out what happened with outlook?

edited to add:
to fix the encryption problem the techie had me run cmd and enter a bunch of regsvr32 .dll commands :shrug:

[welshTerrier2]

3. hmmm ...

i believe sites that use the secure channel i referred to (i.e. httpS) transmit using encrypted data ... different sites used to require different "levels" of encryption ...

in IE, it you click on "Help" and then on "About Internet Explorer", a window will popup that shows your current "cipher strength" ... this not be lower than 128-bit ... fyi, the more bits, the harder it is to decipher the encryption codes ... it's sort of like it's harder to guess a longer password than a shorter one ...

are you using a router to connect your computer to your modem? if so, many routers offer you the ability to encrypt information between the computer and the router ... i doubt that's the problem though if you could access the sites using Netscape ... it sounds like it's browswer related to me ...

the "regsvr32" utility is used to "register" a bunch of "dll's" (think of them as "sub-programs" or utilities that enhance a main program like IE) ... even if a ".dll" file is resident on your computer, the program that uses it may not be able to find it unless it is "registered" ... the program is able to find the location of the .dll utility in the registry and then is able to use it ...

no idea what happened with Outlook ... you might ensure that you don't have a virus or any spyware running ... Outlook is a popular target for such abuses ... i would strongly recommend installing the following anti-spyware program (it's free)... it's worked great for me ... if you do install it, make sure you turn on all the security options by going through every item on every menu ... the whole process should only take you about five minutes ... here's a download link:

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

what i like about spyWareBlaster is that it runs automatically ... you don't need to run it periodically ... the only thing you should do periodically, however, is check for updates ...

oh, and one last thing ... i once had the same problem where i couldn't run windows update ... no idea what caused the problem but it eventually just started working again ...

hope this helps or at least clarifies a few things ...

[cheezus]

4. this reeks of spyware

my guess is that some naught application hijacked your "hosts" file, and it making certain "sensetive" sites go to their own server in hopes of getting your passwords.