I am pulling my hair out here. As someone who has studied and worked in the field of computers professionally, I should be able to figure this out, but I am completely stumped.
First, some background:
The machine in question here is a very old machine, from 1998 or 99, somewhere around there. It was designed for Windows 98, but will also run XP at surprisingly usable speeds as long as you're not doing anything that takes too much processing power. This isn't my main machine or anything, it's just an old machine I've kept around for those times when I want to run old games or other old software natively(i.e. not in virtualization software) that won't run right or at all on newer machines.
Here's the issue: I recently did the first repartitioning/formatting/clean install of XP that I've done on this machine in a year. After installing the ethernet drivers, I opened IE(IE6 is the version that comes with XP) to test the internet connection. It works, except for a handful of sites - google, gmail, youtube, and the windows update site are the ones that I've noticed so far, with everything else seeming to load fine(or as fine as sites in 2015 will load in a browser from 2002).
When I try to load these sites, IE just gives me its never-very-helpful template "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" error page. From early on, I suspected the problem was related to the fact that these sites are secure(i.e. even if you type http://www.google.com, it's going to try to load it securely with the https protocol). This issue often has to do with the security certificates certain websites send to the browser.
Before anything else, I tried connecting to those sites outside of IE. I pinged them from the command line with success. I downloaded the most recent version of Firefox, and it successfully loaded those sites.
So I assumed it must be an IE issue. I first downloaded and installed IE8, the latest version of IE that will work in XP. This didn't resolve the issue.
I then googled the issue on my iPad - I should say at this point that there are many other devices on my network, another much newer desktop running XP, two laptops running Windows 7, two iPads, and two Kindles, and they all get to these sites fine. The issue is with this machine only - and found many places giving the same suggestions and linking to the same Microsoft knowledge base pages. Based on all of that, I tried the following:
Cleared SSL State on the Content Tab of Internet Options.
Made sure "Use SSL 2.0", "Use SSL 3.0", and "Use TLS 1.0" were checked on the Advanced tab of Internet Options.
Made sure "Use a proxy server for your LAN" was unchecked in LAN Settings in Internet Options.
Added the sites to my "Trusted Sites" list in the Security tab in Internet Options.
Turned Windows Firewall off.
Re-registered a bunch of DLL files that various places told me to.
Did a "netsh winsock reset" from the command line.
Flushed and re-established the DNS settings.
Made sure my system date was right and re-synced it with time.Windows.com, as incorrect system times are often a reason why secure websites fail to load.
Tried running IE8 "without add-ons"
Tried booting XP in Safe Mode and running IE8 that way.
Nothing has worked.
Some sources also say to use Windows Update, but I can't do that because that's one of the sites that won't load in IE, and it requires IE.
It should also be noted that I am not running any security software - not Norton, not McAfee, not AVG, not anything - that would have its own firewall that could cause problems like this. Furthermore, since this is a brand new clean install of XP, there is no way there's any virus or malware or anything like that at fault. I haven't downloaded a thing except for the Firefox setup file and, as you're about to see, the Chrome setup file.
Since these sites had loaded successfully in Firefox, I got curious about Chrome. It turns out that the most recent version of Chrome won't install on this machine because it doesn't meet the minimum requirements, so I downloaded a two-year-old version of Chrome from oldversion.com and installed it. It turns out, these sites won't load in Chrome either. Chrome's error message reads:
"Invalid Server Certificate
You attempted to reach www.google.com, but the server presented an invalid certificate. You cannot proceed because the website operator has requested heightened security for this domain.
When you connect to a secure website, the server hosting that site presents your browser with something called a "certificate" to verify its identity. This certificate contains identity information such as the address of the website, which is verified by a third party that your computer trusts. By checking that the address in the certificate matches the address of the website, it is possible to verify that you are securely communicating with the website you intended, and not a third party(such as an attacker on your network).
In this case, the server certificate or an intermediate CA certificate presented to your browser is invalid. This may mean that the certificate is malformed, contains invalid fields, or is not supported."
This message is much more helpful than the IE message insofar as describing the problem, but not much more helpful as to what the solution is. It confirms that the issue is a certificate issue and disabuses me of the notion that this is an IE-specific issue. The fact that it works on Firefox makes some sense after reading that Firefox apparently handles security certificates differently than Chrome, although I've already forgotten in what way.
So this is where I'm at now. These sites ping successfully and open in Firefox, but will not open in IE6, IE8, or a version of Chrome from 2013.
I'm at a loss. I would greatly appreciate any assistance anyone can offer.
First, some background:
The machine in question here is a very old machine, from 1998 or 99, somewhere around there. It was designed for Windows 98, but will also run XP at surprisingly usable speeds as long as you're not doing anything that takes too much processing power. This isn't my main machine or anything, it's just an old machine I've kept around for those times when I want to run old games or other old software natively(i.e. not in virtualization software) that won't run right or at all on newer machines.
Here's the issue: I recently did the first repartitioning/formatting/clean install of XP that I've done on this machine in a year. After installing the ethernet drivers, I opened IE(IE6 is the version that comes with XP) to test the internet connection. It works, except for a handful of sites - google, gmail, youtube, and the windows update site are the ones that I've noticed so far, with everything else seeming to load fine(or as fine as sites in 2015 will load in a browser from 2002).
When I try to load these sites, IE just gives me its never-very-helpful template "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" error page. From early on, I suspected the problem was related to the fact that these sites are secure(i.e. even if you type http://www.google.com, it's going to try to load it securely with the https protocol). This issue often has to do with the security certificates certain websites send to the browser.
Before anything else, I tried connecting to those sites outside of IE. I pinged them from the command line with success. I downloaded the most recent version of Firefox, and it successfully loaded those sites.
So I assumed it must be an IE issue. I first downloaded and installed IE8, the latest version of IE that will work in XP. This didn't resolve the issue.
I then googled the issue on my iPad - I should say at this point that there are many other devices on my network, another much newer desktop running XP, two laptops running Windows 7, two iPads, and two Kindles, and they all get to these sites fine. The issue is with this machine only - and found many places giving the same suggestions and linking to the same Microsoft knowledge base pages. Based on all of that, I tried the following:
Cleared SSL State on the Content Tab of Internet Options.
Made sure "Use SSL 2.0", "Use SSL 3.0", and "Use TLS 1.0" were checked on the Advanced tab of Internet Options.
Made sure "Use a proxy server for your LAN" was unchecked in LAN Settings in Internet Options.
Added the sites to my "Trusted Sites" list in the Security tab in Internet Options.
Turned Windows Firewall off.
Re-registered a bunch of DLL files that various places told me to.
Did a "netsh winsock reset" from the command line.
Flushed and re-established the DNS settings.
Made sure my system date was right and re-synced it with time.Windows.com, as incorrect system times are often a reason why secure websites fail to load.
Tried running IE8 "without add-ons"
Tried booting XP in Safe Mode and running IE8 that way.
Nothing has worked.
Some sources also say to use Windows Update, but I can't do that because that's one of the sites that won't load in IE, and it requires IE.
It should also be noted that I am not running any security software - not Norton, not McAfee, not AVG, not anything - that would have its own firewall that could cause problems like this. Furthermore, since this is a brand new clean install of XP, there is no way there's any virus or malware or anything like that at fault. I haven't downloaded a thing except for the Firefox setup file and, as you're about to see, the Chrome setup file.
Since these sites had loaded successfully in Firefox, I got curious about Chrome. It turns out that the most recent version of Chrome won't install on this machine because it doesn't meet the minimum requirements, so I downloaded a two-year-old version of Chrome from oldversion.com and installed it. It turns out, these sites won't load in Chrome either. Chrome's error message reads:
"Invalid Server Certificate
You attempted to reach www.google.com, but the server presented an invalid certificate. You cannot proceed because the website operator has requested heightened security for this domain.
When you connect to a secure website, the server hosting that site presents your browser with something called a "certificate" to verify its identity. This certificate contains identity information such as the address of the website, which is verified by a third party that your computer trusts. By checking that the address in the certificate matches the address of the website, it is possible to verify that you are securely communicating with the website you intended, and not a third party(such as an attacker on your network).
In this case, the server certificate or an intermediate CA certificate presented to your browser is invalid. This may mean that the certificate is malformed, contains invalid fields, or is not supported."
This message is much more helpful than the IE message insofar as describing the problem, but not much more helpful as to what the solution is. It confirms that the issue is a certificate issue and disabuses me of the notion that this is an IE-specific issue. The fact that it works on Firefox makes some sense after reading that Firefox apparently handles security certificates differently than Chrome, although I've already forgotten in what way.
So this is where I'm at now. These sites ping successfully and open in Firefox, but will not open in IE6, IE8, or a version of Chrome from 2013.
I'm at a loss. I would greatly appreciate any assistance anyone can offer.