Sunday, March 21, 2010

Can ping can not browse

It was Thanksgiving and I went to my adviser's place. He had a Toshiba laptop with a weird error. None of the browsers could connect to internet. However, if you ping any website using command prompt you do get replies. That means the laptop connects to the internet but not through a browser. I tried various things such as disabling Symantec antivirus, even disabling firewall and trying to run browser as an administrator but to no avail. Finally, before giving up I wanted to try the virgin OS, it was XP in this case. So I downloaded
Norton removal tool from their website. After that I uninstalled Norton antivirus and then ran this tool to remove the residues. It asked for a restart and Voila. Everything was working fine. The browsers connected to internet without any problem.
The issue was with Norton for sure. But what was the issue? The thing is that laptop these days come with a pre-installed version of Norton. If you uninstall that one and install a new version it might conflict with earlier version and cause weird issues in your OS. You need to run Norton Removal tool once you uninstall their product. In short, Norton Sucks. I don't recommend a product which needs a special removal tool. If I were Symantec I would bundle this tool in the un-installation package. Anyways, I hope this will come handy.

If you liked this post please comment below. It makes us happy to see that we could help someone. Moreover, it makes google think we are important and this way we can reach more and more people.

27 comments:

  1. Thanks. That was great. I had this issue for so long.

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  2. Cheers, had 3 laptops with this same issue (all toshiba vista)

    tried resetting /repairing connection

    successfully pings sites, and traceroute seems ok, but no luck with browsers, proxy settings ok as well as DNS

    ran malwarebytes + spybot scan which returned a few issues, disabled some rogue processes and services but still 'internet explorer cannot display the website', disabled all a/v + firewall for safe measure

    following further advice i tried netsh winsock reset and rebooted- but still nothing

    just as i was considering a fresh install i happened across your blog and followed the instructions, and working a treat

    dear god norton needs to sort its uninstallation methods out

    thanks for the advice

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  3. Funny thing is my wifes Toshiba from Best Buy just did the same thing. I argued with the a support tech from Comcast for an hour because everything on my end looked fine. I removed Norton and now I can connect to the internet. She has Windows 7 on a Toshiba Satellite 455. I was about to take the laptop back to Best Buy because of this.

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  4. Glad to hear that I could help you guys. It was thanksgiving and all I did was fixing this bug while others were enjoying the party. Well being a nerd that I am I enjoyed this my way. :) Thank you for comments.

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  5. Sounds pretty reasinable to me dude!

    Jess
    www.total-anonymity.us.tc

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  6. My mom's computer suddenly has this problem. I ran the removal tool, rebooted, and viola no more issues. Thanks for the tip.

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  7. Something to remember about the Norton Removal Tool. It removes EVERYTHING that is Norton. Not just NAV/SAV. If you have PC Anywhere on your system, you won't have it if you run the NRT. Just something to be aware of.

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  8. @TooMuchTime,
    Thank you for your feedback.

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  9. I have recently purchased an ASUS K-501 series notebook running Windows 7 and have a similar problem. When I saw this comment thread I was excited as I have spent the entire week trying to access the internet but with no joy. The difference with my case is that I have, to my (limited) knowledge, no Norton products installed. It came with Trend Micro Security.
    Please help!

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  10. Anony,
    Try uninstalling Trend Micro
    1.
    Close the main console if it is open.

    2.
    Click on Start > My Computer.

    3.
    Double-click Local Disk C: then double-click on the Program Files folder.

    4.
    Look for the Trend Micro folder then open it.

    5.
    Look for the Internet Security folder then open it.

    6.
    Double-click on the TISSuprt.exe file. It has a red and white lifesaver icon. The Trend Micro Diagnostic Toolkit window appears.

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  11. After hours of searching, I found this and it solved the issue! Thanks so much!!

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  12. Dear Anony,
    Thanks to you for leaving that comment. Readers like you motivate us to share our knowledge. :)

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  13. Additional steps if antivirus removal doesn't do the job (skip step 2.)

    1) virus / worm

    unwise.exe, a phony Windows Antivirus program, and a rootkit named tdss may have caused this problem.

    run gmer, combofix, and malwarebytes to clean the computer up.

    2) Disable/uninstall Norton / McAfee. with symantec removal tool (an old symantec install may have left deviant code.) mcafee may be a culprit as well. You may want to uninstall your Anti-Malware anyway. Uninstalling may be necessary. Disabling alone may not be adequate. Norton may have bits and pieces left on teh disk, use Norton Removal Tool at http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039 to get EVERYTHING.

    3) Try to 'telnet google.com 80', 'ipconfig /renew' from the command line, or right click the connection icon and select "Repair".
    If either of those give you a weird error, then it's probably winsock corruption (Which only affects TCP, so i.e.: PING works (IP only), but a TCP connection does not)
    Run winsockfix or follow directions at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259

    4) The Cisco VPN client has sabotaged browsing in one case. If you use it, reinstalling it may help.

    5) Replace hosts.ini with only 127.0.0.1 as an entry.

    6) Ensure no proxies have been set if you don't have any.

    7) Revert to an older driver (or upgrade to another.) You may need to run winsockfix again

    8) Set BIOS to defaults to undo any overclocking

    9) At cmd prompt, type: ipconfig /flushdns

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  14. after uninstall norton. it's working. Thanks

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  15. I got the same problem and not running Norton. AVG was installed and I removed that. Any help?

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  16. Please make sure you never had norton. If it came bundled with your PC chances are that there are remains of it. AVG should not cause this problem. Do you get a specific error when you hit troubleshoot in internet explorer?

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  17. I hate these Norton Morons. I un-installed Norton from add/remove programs but still had issues. I never thought I needed another tool to uninstall this junk. And why would they put something that would cause issues.

    Thank you for this page. After using this tool, everything seems to work fine.

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  18. Dear Anony,

    We are glad you were able to solve your problem. Norton should do something about this but looks like the software has gone out of their hands.

    Regards,
    Programmer

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  19. Had a similar problem, but only with AVG installed. Eventually solved by ipconfig /flushdns; thank you all!

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  20. Dear Anony,

    Thanks for sharing your solution with us.

    Regards,
    Programmer

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  21. Thanks for making this info available.
    Uninstalled NORTON and all was OK
    It used to be a good product until they tried to be a do all program.

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  22. Thanks for this great tip, it helped me a lot and now i have no issues with it....

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  23. THANK YOU! This saved my butt on a client's laptop. I was ready to do a repair installation when through a search for "ping but not browse" directed me to this post. Thank you!

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  24. How can I get the removal tool if I can't browse the internet?

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