IE Throwing Up Problems On Home Network

I have two pc's hooked up on my home network using a crossover cable. The host pc is windows XP and the client pc is a windows 98 machine. The network is running fine, except for the fact that on the 98 machine IE6 throws a wobbler and stops displaying web pages, it comes up with the error message "The Page Could Not Be Displayed". This is funny though as the internet connection is fine on the XP machine and i can log in to MSN Messenger on the 98 machine. Its just IE refusing to work for some reason. I'm pretty sure all the protocols are fine as the pc's can see each other and can access each others files. IE does seem to display pages for 5 minutes after i reboot though after that it stops until i reboot. its sooooo annoying. any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

P.S. the specs of the 98 machine are:

It's basically a compaq presario
celeron 600MHZ CPU
64MB RAM
15Gig HD
Network Card
2 Optical Drives

 

have you made sure of the windows updates. They cause alot of issues like this if they are not
If you click on start you should see updates right there

 

i have updated the XP machine continously, except for SP2 as i am a bit wary as some people have reported problems with it. with 98 machine i havent updated it in the last 6 months or so. but i just realised something that i had not mentioned before. this is that IE does sometimes display a page seemingly from Zone Alarm, saying that it is preventing access to the internet as there is a security problem. the thing is i havent even got Zone Alarm installed. so im stumped

 

Did you have ZA installed before? Have you checked for spyware with adaware or spybot S&D?

 

I did not have ZA installed before, the i did have a firewall installed before called EZ Firewall, but that isnt on there anymore. i have checked it with Ad Aware SE even that throws up nothin. the cross over cable cant be causing a problem as the connection still seems to be alive as i can log into MSN Messenger and chat.

 

Usually if you have an incorrectly configured firewall, you won't have any Internet access at all. This does not seem to be the case given the information in first post.

After the 5 minute period when IE no longer works, do you still have Internet access. If not, then it might not be IE that is the problem.

 

yea the internet still seems to work as i can still access MSN Messenger, n tht functions properly. although wen windows media player tries to access the internet thru it media guide thing the same thing happens it dnt show any page.

 

Maybe another way to ask the question, before the 5 minute time period do ALL Internet related applications function properly?

After the 5 minute time period, what Internet related applications function properly?

After the 5 minute time period, what Internet related applications do not function properly.

Include all that you can think of (IE, Media Player, E-Mail Program, MSN, any other Browser, Anti-Virus updates, FTP, Telnet etc.)

 

ahhh i can give a basic gist now, a detailed list will follow 2m after i get bak 4m work. Before the 5 min period everythin related to the internet seems to function perfectly well, this includes IE, MSN, email programs, even the odd pop ups appear, this is one occasion i am actually happy to see them. after the 5 min period, IE stops displaying web pages, WMP also displays the cannot display page error, MSN still functions perfectly ok. this is as far as i know at the moment, i cannot do anythin at this time of day as my gran is sleeping in that room. i shall have more up dated info 2m in the evening.

 

You might see if you can ping external sites by both name and IP address before and after the problem is there. Seem to recall MSN using IP addresses rather than relying on DNS (Could be wrong on this. Getting old you know)

 

There is also the added complexity of using ICS.

What happens if you reverse the roles of the computers.

This way if the Win98 one starts to work, you can better point at ICS as being a part of the problem.

 

can you ping www.yahoo.com from the 98 machine have you test with another browser ?

 

That's what I was asking just a few posts ago.

Actually, I like to first try pinging by IP address. If this doesn't work, then pinging by name isn't going to. The reverse is not always true since you can still be able to access the Internet and not be able to ping by name due to DNS issues.