Turned in a Help Desk ticket at the office to see if they could diagnose my PC’s woes, i.e., that no application but IE can get out to the Internet.
Okay, so I used to work the Help Desk (and still do, in a private capacity), so I have a great deal sympathy for HD techies and the kinds of flaky problems they deal with on a daily basis.
But when I note, very clearly, multiple times, that all applications except IE cannot access the Internet, demonstrating same, and ennumerating as examples Yahoo Instant Messenger and Firefox — then focusing on Firefox’s settings, and deleting all the cache and temp files therein, really truly does not constitute useful diagnostics. Nor is suggesting uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox a very good idea. And let’s not go to the “we might have to try rebuilding the machine” bullshit.
So after about 20 minutes, the conclusion is that maybe it’s a network thing, a firewall thing, etc. (um, yeah, I think I suggested that about two minutes after you entered), but he’s not aware of any crackdown on all apps except IE, but there might be. Which is plausible, but which I’d like some confirmation of and discussion regarding (since I can point to a legitimate business reason for YIM, at the very least).
So he’s going to ask around and see if he can find out if there’s some firewall issue that he’s not aware of, and maybe forward the ticket to the network guys. We’ll see if that helps things any.
Oh, the fact, also mentioned a few times, that I can access internal web sites via Firefox would seem to indicate it’s a network/firewall thing, too. Jeez.
While you’re working with the help desk, could you find out why, when I moved my picture folder to my D: drive Vista decided to send all my pics to ??????? Of course, I did not back up! Urgh…
I’m not sure with Vista, but I know that you can’t just treat any “My Xxxxx” folders in XP as you would normally, i.e., just move them, drag them, rename them.
If you go to your D: drive, you may actually see your photos are there, but just aren’t showing up as “My Pictures” or whatever.
Or, I may not know what I’m talking about.
I have this problem as well. I can surf and email all day long. But MS Office apps cannot access online help. It says I am not connected to the internet. And iTunes, including the GraceNote database, indicate I am not connected either. I am googling like crazy to find a cure. So far, turning firewalls off and changing network type has had no effect.