Can’t access Gmail, USC Email, Facebook, and other sites requiring a login

Today my friend Tiff had a problem with her Internet connection. She uses Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. The web browser was unable to access any websites requiring a login, including Gmail (mail.google.com), USC Email (email.usc.edu), Facebook (facebook.com), Yahoo! Mail (mail.yahoo.com), Blackboard (blackboard.usc.edu) and so on.

But the strange part was that all other websites worked. We could use Google search no problem. We could browse nature.com and other websites. No trouble whatsoever. Just certain sites could not be accessed.

Now that I think about it, maybe it’s because those are secure sites (https), which are treated differently by the firewall.

Anyway, I did a thorough audit of all IE’s settings, all the networking settings, and any active firewalls– including Windows Firewall, which, oddly enough, was active.

I looked in the tray for suspicious firewall software, such as Symantec Client Security which has caused so many problems in the past. It looked like no extra firewall software was running, although an expired version of S

I didn’t find anything wrong, and still the web pages wouldn’t load. She didn’t do anything before this happened that might’ve caused it. So I decided to try a reboot.

Bam! It worked. Note to self: restarting the computer is one of the first things to try. But I’m actually glad I didn’t, because I got a better idea of her setup and how her computer is configured. It’s XP with old browser versions on a Dell Inspiron 700m.

So often I’ve wondered to myself, “Who uses old browsers like IE 6 and Firefox 1.0 Preview Release?”

Today, I got my answer. It’s not a bad thing– computers should learn to be more user-friendly. But there’s still a long way to go. And for those who think everyone uses Firefox: you’re wrong. IE still owns the web, unfortunately.