IE 6.0 won't work except on AOL

[ukulele]

A friend called this morning and asked me to help with his browser problem. He say's if he tries to go to a web address from IE 6.0 address line he only gets a web page not found error, but he can go to AOL home page and get into the sites. Some of the sites he uses for business only work right if he access them from IE, but not from AOL. Is this possibly a proxy setting in IE that got changed? Or is AOL forcing traffic through their site? I haven't had time to look at the computer myself, and figured it best to ask here first before wasting any time on it. I did tell him over a year ago to subscribe to a good local ISP and even set it up for him. He said he never used the local ISP and dumped it after paying for it for almost a year. I guess some people just love AOL. :)

[BipolarBill]

Is he on a network? Is there a proxy server?

[ukulele]

He is not on a network. It is a dial up connection. I have never used AOL so I don't know if that is automatically routed through a proxy server. Do you know how AOL is normally set up? Primarily he is using the computer for stock trading and online purchasing for a small store. He said he can connect to Datek through AOL but that the streaming applets don't work unless he connects directly from IE address line which he was able to do up until a few days ago. He is a typical example of a person who buys a computer for one or two applications but has no clue what so ever how to use the OS. I don't think he knows the difference between an icon and a menu. He is one of those persons who needs to set an administrative password and then promptly forget it. His computer is a 2 year old Dell laptop running WinME. (He told me it was running Win 2000 NT, that is how much he knows about it.) I will look at it for him on monday, I was just hoping to shed some light on the problem before I did.

[BipolarBill]

The new AOL software installs all sorts of proprietary drivers, protocols and virtual proxies to try and squeeze more performance out of an anaolg modem. The proxies are internal to the machine. It's an absolute abomination.

All that your friend can do is have two dialups - separately. At Prodigy, we would recommend reinstalling Windows DUN after AOL was installed. That usually helped.

[ukulele]

Thanks BP, That is what I was thinking too. I'll try your suggestion and reinstall DUN for him, if that doesn't help he's on his own. If he want's AOL he can call them for any further help. Some people just won't listen when you tell them that AOL stands for Amateurs On Line. :t