Alright campers:D

Popped over my in laws last night and my father in law was slowly giving himself a hearty attack getting wound up with the computer so I said I'd ask you clever folks....

He has an internet connection,that was checked out by the ISP .I logged onto his itunes account and that worked fine.

However he only has an internet explorer icon on his 'puter and we tried for about an hour last night to connect via that, the screen opens ok but then just sits there doing nothing.If you try to close it down it says not responding and takes ages to go.

So I wanted to try and download firefox for him,see if that works at all but of course without accessing the internet I can't download it.

Any ideas folks ? The easier the better cos I'm not exactly computer literate.

Fangoo please

Can you not download the install via your own machine, then put it on a disc or usb key for them.

withnailed, what goldie said

Hi Withnail

Have you tryed internet explorer (without add ons ) its in system tools ,
should work for you to download firefox , i also recommend Spy bot search and destroy be installed if not all ready

hope this helps

stickyrussian

Sorry not to good with computers so can't really help with the OP, it could be the smoke but your father in law has itunes!

does he wear a tracksuit and baseball cap?, and drive a Nova GTE

Here you go man, this'll sort his problems out

Click Me

Through windows update

Its actually his sons but he downloads the occasional floyd song


Cheers everyone else.. I have Linux on my computer so not sure that it would work if I copied it off of mine and onto his

I'll have a look in system tools sticky thanks.He has loads of spyware stuff on there already, in fact he thinks it may be some of those that caused the slowdown problems in the first place,but thats just a wild guess really

e2a: I know felix... he sounded interested when I mentioned it last night... just need to get a laptop or summat with it on to show him now

How about ftp via the command line
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Fi...ser-74724.shtml

I'll hurry the missus along with choosing her new laptop then

I would double check the network is ok.

1. Click Start
2. Click run
3. Type cmd and press enter
4. In the black box type in ping www.bbc.co.uk
you should now see some thing like this :

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.253.67] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=119
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=119
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=119
Reply from 212.58.253.67: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=119

As long as you get the replies you are connected to the net. Next step I would take after that would be to get something like malwarebytes installed as you may have a nasty installed. you may have problems getting this to work so you would need to get it downloaded somwhere else and use it in windows safe mode.
if you are not getting replies you have a problem connecting to the net.

Bobo

The fact that iTunes works should be telling you that networtk access is ok

That depends on what he actually did in Itunes, when off the network you can still open it and transfer existing tunes onto a device.

Apologies for trying to help.....I'll not bother next time

Easy tigers

Cheers bigbobo... I did go into the itunes store and looked at a few different albums so pretty sure the connection is there, and I looked on Network connections on local area connections and that was showing that stuff was coming in and out ok.

Thanks again peeps,few things to try tomorrow now

Hi Withnail - have you checked the Internet Options in the Control Panel? Check the 2nd tab Security and set the slider to medium or medium high, same with Local intranet and Trusted Sites, and under the 3rd tab, Privacy, select Advanced, override automatic cookies, then select Block First and Third Party cookies and check the box for Always allow session cookies. BTW if you still have the install disk you used for your own Linux, you could use it as a live CD to get online and download Firefox. Also check your firewall settings, it may be something simple like Internet Explorer has been blocked at that level. Hope you get it sorted.

edited to add: if you download firefox via your own pc you can burn it to a cd/dvd or a pendrive formatted to Fat, Fat32, or NTFS, Windows will read it ok.

1. Download Windows versions of the following from you're comp; Adaware, Mozilla, and NOD32 if you dont mind ignoring copyright laws (skip to 3 other wise)
2. Install NOD 32, and run full scan.
3. Install and run Adaware scan
4. Run Windows Updates
5. Install Mozilla Firefox
6. Download new version of IE and install (just to keep windows happily running)
7. Run System Clean-up
8. Run Defragmenting Tool

Let me know how you get on or if thats too complicated (I don't know you're skills, sorry if it sounds patranising )

Hope all can be figured out man. If thats a ball ache let me know and I'll look harder into a easier solution.

Peace

As bigbobo suggested, from a DOS box, try:

ping bbc.co.uk

just to see if the connection really *is* up.

If it is, then also from a DOS box, type:

ftp releases.mozilla.org

For the username, type anonymous just press Enter for the password, then when logged in, type each of these commands at the ftp> prompt followed by Enter:

hash
bin
cd /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest-3.5/win32/en-GB/
lcd c:\
mget *.exe

then press 'y' when it asks you 'mget Firefox Setup 3.5.2.exe?'

when it's done, you can type:

quit
disconnect

and then at the root of C:\ you will find Firefox ready to install.

The very first thing I would do is Google 'Trend Housecall' and do a scan of the machine.

Let us know how you get on.

Nah just read through the original post to find out exactly what the problem is then work from there. As we already knew his network connection was fine from iTunes there's no point in going back and retesting it.

Far more likely is that IE has become corrupt and replacing it with an alternative browser will solve the problem

Ta again everybody peeps... will print this off tomorrow when I go round there... no doubt be back to ask how to reassemble a smashed up computer, but we can only try

There's never any harm in trying a nice, simple PING from the command-line - I find it reassuring myself. OK - it's a bit redundant doing it when your web browser appears to be working but I wouldn't trust iTunes as a measure of 'net functionality, myself.

Withnail - if you've gone home and are going back tomorrow you should download a few things onto a USB Flash drive or onto a CD-R so that you can use them tomorrow - I'd get the Firefox installer for sure, and also maybe fetch a recovery disc in case the infections get worse so that you can't boot properly - just in case.

Maybe something useful like HijackThis and MalwareByte's scanner.

True but I'm a lazy fekker me, if I know connectivity is working (as proved by an application that access the web and don't mind which app that is) then that's good enough for me .

Go with using ftp to download firefox, its your best option.

Errm - ¿ever bother reading whole threads?

withnail iam a bit late to this thread, but as it looks it hasnt been solved yet maybe i can help a bit.

As its a windowz machine, a question, has it updated itself to IE8. IE8 can cause a LOT of problems on older XP machines, it broke one of mine big time, with exactlly the symtoms you describe.

Check the IE version, and if its IE8 thats where the problem lies, and removing it isnt as easy as it seems.

Using the IE8 removal tool from the M$ site wont work, as it breaks the existing copy of IE7

The problem comes IF XP SP3 was installed AFTER IE7 (and as IE7 was realsed long before SP3 anyone with auto updates on will have installed IE7 first) the way i got around the problem was with the following, becouse of the way SP3 intergrates with IE7 the steps MUST be done in the following order, otherwise they wont work.

A. Unistall IE8 - this will leave the machine with a broken copy of IE7
B. Unistall SP3
C. Unistall IE7 - at this stage you will be left with a copy of IE6, that will work, and allows you to access the M$ update site for the SP3 and IE7 reinstalls you need
D. Reinstall SP3
E. Reinstall IE7


Alternativley, follow Scribble advice above to install FF, its a better browser, but does leave you with one problem, in order to use the M$ update site, you must use IE as M$ wont let you update via FF

The problem was solved, but that's interesting info about SP3/IE7.

Anyone having problems with Window$ Update for whatever reason are advised to look into the wonderful, free AutoPatcher - it supports all 32Bit Win releases