Aspies For Freedom

For some reason, over the last couple of days, Firefox has stopped working.  As soon as I start it up, I get an error message saying:

It appears regardless of what website I attempt to visit.  Internet Explorer 7 still works fine though (that's what I'm using at the moment).

I installed Opera last night, and that has the same problem too - can't connect to any websites at all.  I know it's not the firewall (Norton) as I turned it off for a minute and even then I couldn't access any websites with Firefox.  In any case, the firewall is set to allow Firefox access to the internet.  I've had a look at the Connection Settings in Firefox and the "direct access to the internet" box is checked.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox, but the problem still remains.

I'm totally bewildered by this.  Has this happened to anyone else before?

I will look into the problem to try and help you. You might want to private message me so I don't forget to give you the help you need. I have never had that problem with Firefox, but I had a similar problem happen with IE 7 and IE 6. It can randomly happen from some program you run, or if you use a proxy server (at least with IE).

Hopefully you can get it fixed, because I know the horrors of internet explorer. And I wouldn't even think about using opera. I hear the security of that browser is worse than Internet explorer. Firefox is probably the best browser out there (even for how much it crashes for no reason >.<.

who is your ISP?
for gods sake,tell me its not AOL-a few years back,there was a bit of a thing with the AOL client disabling IE
lemme see....i assume you have tried rebooting,have you tried going to tools->options and making sure everything is set to automatic under your connection options?

probably norton, some AV software has a hidden proxy, something must've happened to change FF's settings and now it's trying to connect without the proxy which fails

A backup, reformat, and reinstall of Windows would be the easiest way to fix it.  Make sure you use something other than Norton, like AVG.

oh yeah,didnt think about that:make sure Norton is set to allow FF:if the program is altered in any way,it has to reconfirm it.

There's an issue where Firefox has short timeouts, it does that after just a couple or a few seconds!

A timeout is supposed to be if it fails to respond within 30 seconds.

Thanks for your replies.  I sorted out this problem by going back to an old restore point on my computer.

Blasphemy, sir!

Does Opera have Noscript, Adblock, Flashblock and Spellchecking?

oh, Obligitory;

ha, I'm coming into this conversation late, but the new version of Opera does in fact have an adblocker.  I haven't bothered to find out about the other stuff, but it uses half the RAM of Firefox, which counts for something

RAM is cheap(that's why I have 8 gigs of it)

Also, Opra isn't open source

I wouldn't be surprised if vista actually breaks firefox on purpose.

lol, I think you've found your problem.

ha, with all this stuff I hear about Vista (I've only worked on it a few times, and I HATED it each time), I'm seriously dreading going for my MCTS certification.    Starting here in about 2 months, but still.   I think Vista should be scrapped, and Microsoft just go back to XP.

Also, Opera may not be open source, but it's free, and for me suits my needs better.

/facepalm

Vista is better than people credit it for.

yes, its hungry; thats because it prefetches (or precaches; the process is called "Superfetch" in Vista) the programs you use most often, so they load faster.
its constantly indexing the HDD. its constantly defragging. its making a (very belated) attempt to tighten up privilages (hence why a lot of old programs *need* to be run as admin).

Bash M$ for a lot of things, but Vista is not as bad as people make out.

oh, and the other side of the arguement; intrusive UAC, aggravating DRM, hungry hungry OS, Compatibility and so on.

correct me if I am wrong...but were the same complaints about min. specs. made about XP as well?