Re: The page cannot be displayed

"Ida Al" <IdaAl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:B7F13EA0-A5C1-42C3-95BC-B47770BD157B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I looked at FiddlerTool and read all about it. Since I am just an average
> computer user, I was a bit overwhelmed! How do I do a simple proxy trace?


Start the proxy program. Tell it which port to listen on.
Change your Connection settings to say you're using a proxy
and with which port. To simplify the latter step, since I tend
to do it a lot, I Run... control inetcpl.cpl,,4 instead of using
the IE Tools menu. Another reason for doing that is that long ago
(IE6 on NT4sp6a) I decided that using the Tools menu to change
proxy settings was unreliable; I'm not sure whether XP has the
same problem or not but old habits die hard.

Some sites don't like you using a proxy program and will fail
in bizarre ways. Microsoft's aspx seems to be a common factor.
But in other examples I would get back messages from a server
such as "peek-a-boo-i-see-you" to know that they were watching
for it. <g>


> What might a comparison between the two computers show?
> How would I fix that?

What I expect you may see is a request to a spyware site
which will try to redirect you later to your desired site. Etc.
Seeing proof of the existence of spyware should be a good
incentive to try harder to eliminate it. ;)


>
> Again this is waht is happening:
> If I go to www.state.id.us this site opens fine. When I click on any links
> to Idaho departments, the error page comes up.

With your proxy tracer you should be able to see whether the proper
requests are being sent in each case. Another possibility is that you
won't see any request at all going out. That could imply that you have
some kind of filter installed in the TCP/IP stack. I'm not sure how
those work. There are some commands you can issue in a cmd window
which might give you a clue about such things:

netsh winsock show catalog >wscat.txt
notepad wscat.txt

Since we (at least I) don't understand what all that display means
it would only be useful to me if I had one which I thought was good
and one which I wasn't too sure about. Then I could compare the two
and focus on trying to understand the validity of any differences.


> If I search for state of Idaho on MSN or Google for instance, and click on
> say Id DMV or any other ID state department the site does not come up!
> On the same computer I have Netscape as part of compuserve and through it
> all these sites open.

Whatever it is which is doing the interfering may only be targetting
requests from IE. You could check that idea by changing the
User-Agent being sent by either browser. E.g. if IE managed
to make a connection while sending a User-Agent for just Mozilla 4.0
or Netscape failed to make a connection while sending a User-Agent
for MSIE 6.0 you would have more evidence supporting the hypothesis.
Unfortunately, I don't know if the actual program name would be available
to either source of interference. Apparently firewalls know somehow
so I suspect that others could as well. In that case then you could
rename iexplore.exe to be something less targettable and see if that
program could make a connection. Etc.


OTOH perhaps the malware could detect that you are trying to detect it
using a proxy tracer. In that case you might be lucky and find that your
requests finally start working normally (subject to the host server not
getting excited about the fact that you are using a proxy)! <eg>


BTW if we change the destination to be any microsoft site
and ask if the user has a Google toolbar installed your symptom
does have lots of precedents. So it's not just malware or spyware
which can cause these bizarre symptoms; broken third-party programs
do it too. The first Google toolbar case occurred before I knew about
either FiddlerTool or netcap and I never did find out what the exact
underlying symptom was.


Good luck

Robert
---


> If I use our other computer, on the same network and router, using the same
> versions of XP and IE6, no problem all these sites open.
> So it seems a problem with a setting in IE or another program interfering
> with IE. I checked the Windows firewall setting and they are the same as on
> the other computer ! Puzzling !
>
> I had replied to your post a couple days a go but apparently the post did
> not take.
>
> "Robert Aldwinckle" wrote:
>
>> "Ida Al" <IdaAl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:F0EB4F14-F5A8-422A-8D1A-6719DBA1B6EA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > The webmaster suggested:
>> > Make sure the button next to "Every Visit to the Page" is checked.
>> > Click on the "Privacy" tab and set your privacy level to the lowest
>> > available and change back after completing the transaction
>> > Clear all cookies and all internet temporary files
>> > All to no avail!
>> > Last recommendation:
>> > Use another computer or web browser.
>> > Only using another computer (with the same version of IE) or another
>> > webbrowser (Netscape on computer with the faulty IE) worked.
>>
>>
>> That last test is a good clue. It means connectivity to the sites is not
>> the issue. It could also provide some interesting diagnostics.
>> For example, if you trace both and compare the traces you would have
>> a much more definite symptom description. Similarly, you could compare
>> a trace of the IE session on the other computer with a trace on yours.
>>
>> If it's just a data difference and the sites allow you to connect via a proxy
>> you could try a simple proxy tracer such as FiddlerTool. Otherwise, in case
>> timing or packet sizes are an issue I would try to do a full packet trace
>> (e.g. using netcap) and then format the resulting .cap files (e.g. using Ethereal.)
>>
>>
>> Good luck
>>
>> Robert Aldwinckle
>> ---
>>
>>
>>


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