Hello,
I am a fairly computer savvy guy, but this latest problem I am dealing with has me stumped. Ill give you a break down of the issue:
A person brought me their PC because they could not access their Yahoo Email account. The problem seems to be related to winsock or something similar:
When you goto www.yahoo.com and click the mail link on their page it gives you the "Internet Explorer Cannot Display Page" yada yada bs. The exact link is http://www.yahoo.com/r/m1. First thing you would assume is router or firewall issues. Well, the only firewall on the PC is the windows firewall which is now disabled. As for the router, it is properly configured to allow traffic through and 4 other pcs that go through the same router work fine.
When the computer is booted in safe mode with networking support it works like it is supposed to.
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Hijackthis didn't really have anything suspicious but I killed off a couple of other things anyway.
I ran CWShredder without any issues.
LSPFix was also ran for good measure but only had the three normal things listed.
WinsockXPFix was ran but didn't fix anything.
Updated IE to version 7... nothing.
Downloaded and installed firefox, that gets absolutely no internet access.
I can ping both the IP and the Domain name with 60+- ms.
Ran ad-aware scanner, found below normal pieces of malware, 6.
Start->Run->msconfig, disabled everything from starting up, as well as all non-microsoft services.
Cleared all users temp, temporary internet, cookies, and history.
Renamed host file to host.old
Uninstalled the NIC card and let windows reinstall it.
Reset router, just to be certain.
Reset all IE and Firefox defaults and lowered their security levels to the min.
Cleared out winsock and winsock2 registry entries.
Of course its been rebooted multiple times and ipconfig /renew
Followed the advice here: http://www.onecomputerguy.com/ie_tips.htm#winsock_fix
Did "netsh winsock reset"
Did a Recovery Point from a month ago.
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Not one of these worked. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Spent hours on this particular problem! Re-installation is NOT AN OPTION so if thats the only advice you have I'd prefer not to hear it.
ryan