Cannot Access Secure Sites - Comments

Hi Bob,
I wish I had seen this article earlier as I have been having trouble accessing secure sites such as my bank account since having Windows XP SP2 installed after a total system crash. Hunting around, by chance I cured the problem just before I came across your article. All I did was go to Tools/Internet Options/Advanced Tab and clicked on "Restore Defaults". Maybe I thereby reset the "SSL" and "TLS" options you refer to above, but it was an easy solution for an innocent like me.

Really appreciate all the help you give us. Regards, Victor.

One last thing that I have seen work is to put the secure site in the trusted sites of IE, which you can do since it's a secure site.
The other thing is to try a different browser.

AG

I had the problem regarding access to secure web sites for the last 18 months and wracked my brains looking for a solution. I finally found the solution last Thursday and want to share this with you.

It involved a little more than turning off the firewall as suggested. We had long since forgotten the free trial of Norton Anti-Virus and Internet Security that since expired. If the months go by, and you forget it's there, and it's not obviously a start program, it's difficult to remember. However, during a search last week I found another person who had forgotten about the Norton, developed the same problems I had, and it was fixed as soon as the Norton "free-trials" were uninstalled. I uninstalled it and voila! Problem solved!

Jeff K.
Irvine, CA

One final thought that no one mentioned - it could be that the "secure site" requires ActiveX to be "allowed to connect". Security wisdom says don't run ActiveX, but so many sites are enamored with the capability of ActiveX. Many sites use ActiveX to set-up forms, etc. I believe this is probably the case with the poster!

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm not aware of any current ActiveX exploits. Since many sites depend on it, I recommend against disabling it.

This problem almost made me crazy when I first downloaded SP2. My "modem on hold" on my V92 modem suddenly stopped working and I was denied access to some, but NOT ALL, secured sites. Finally turned off my firewall and presto ! everything was back to normal. Wish they could warn us before they "fix" some things.

they have a web blocker at work now and i can t get on blocked sites now ? they are using watch gaurd technologies , how can i get around this

If you have similar issues with Belkin router, you can try changing the MTU settings on the computer. Note: If you change MTU on one computer, it is likely you will want to change it on your other computers, switches, and routers, as well.

The third party Dr. TCP software can be used to change the MTU setting. This can be downloaded from http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp

Unzip the Utility to your desktop. Run the utility.
In the Adapter Settings pull down, select the Ethernet driver and adapter used to connect with the network.
In the MTU box, type the MTU size (1400)you are trying.
Click in any other box, without changing the data there.
Click Save. Click Exit. Restart the computer.

I also have a similar problems from last 3-4 days. I am not able to access any mails(yahoo, gmail) or any secure sites which requires login from my pc. When I try to access these, IE says page not found, netsacape says connection refused to .... But I can access normal sites like google or news sites which doesn't require a login id. This happened all of a sudden overnight, nothing has changed on the security level. I doubt it can be some spyware? Any light into this matter is really appreciated. Thanks.

I had the same problem where i was unable to access secure sites e.g. Hotmail,Yahoo Mail etc. I just restarted my router every time the message would come up with page not displayed, and by restarted i mean resetting the whole thing, clearing all data. A couple of weeks ago I found this box thing on the wireless router settings called UPnP, this was disabled, after enabling it i have never had the problem with not being able to access secure sites!! Try enabling UPnP if it is not already done so.

Randomly enabling or disabling router settings (like UPnP) is not advisable unless you know what it does. UPnP is for Universal Plug and Play, and in your router by enabling this you are saying to ANY application that can make use of this: "go ahead, open up my network to anything you feel like slamming me with." Besides, this is unlikely the problem. I have 9 computers on my network using the same router to access the internet, only two of them are unable to access any https, ssl, or email sites, and UPnP is Disabled on the router. Still haven't found a fix for the two computers, but the other seem to have no problem at all. Even reinstalling Windows XP from scratch has not cured the problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated. All posted solutions have failed.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Have you tried connecting it directly to the cable/dsl modem, bypassing the router?