Webmaster Forum / Browsers / Internet Explorer / September 2003

Wayne - Thanks alot - just for fun here's a list of the
things I tried - I was posting this to newsgroups when I
came across your suggestion - IT WORKED for me too - Win XP Pro

No more sleepless nights :o)

Hello,

I have a very strange problem that will not allow me to Browse
www.microsoft.com only.  I can browse anywhere else I have tried (And I've
tried many), but can't access any website beginning with
www.microsoft.com.  I have searched the forums and newsgroups, and have
only found a couple people with this exact problem. Like me they are
getting many helpful solutions, but no fix.  This appeared to come in
around the time of the Blaster virus, but behaves almost opposite -
Instead of blasting www.microsoft.com - it is blocking access.  All of
IE6's latest patches reside on www.microsoft.com so I don't know if this
has been addressed or not.  Below are the steps I tried - in what I
remember to be the order.

I am running WIN XP Pro, IE6, and Opera 7.0 Browsers do same thing.

Already Tried:

1. Clear History, Temp Files, and Cookies through IE6 and manually.
2. Run IE6 Repair utility.
3. Remove all Firewalls, Spyware removers, and add-blockers.
4. Tried new Browser and ISP.
5. Swept all hard disks (including compressed) with Norton 2004 up to date
virus check - Clean.
6. Uninstalled Norton AV, and swept all disks with PC-cillin Demo - Clean
7.  Reset TCP/IP Stack (Can't uninstall with XP) using netsh.
8. ipconfig /release, renew, flushdns.
9. searched Registry for www.microsoft.com - found 1 entry - replaced with
www.yahoo.com.
10. Put Registry entry back like it was.
11. Shut off dns caching altogether - DNS Client Service.
12. Oh yea - I renamed hosts file to hosts.old a few steps back. It was
empty. 13. Actually step 4 should be - restored system from 2 month old
Disk Image.

Any additional help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

TIA