Hi guys not sure if this is the right place to post this.... But here goes:

I cannot access certain websites (think it is only the secure ones): Hotmail, Gmail, Facebook, home email account; when I use my laptop (wireless), but i can access all others that i have tried.

When I use one of my mates laptop (wireless same network), I can access the above websites.

What is wrong? Why do I have to do so that I can access those sites?

With IE 7, it say that the page cannot be displayed, I can then run a diagonistic test to see what the problem is , it comes back and says that "I had to check the firewalls parameters for ports. HTTP (80), HTTPS (443) and FTP (21)"

I have also tried with firefox, same problem.

Where do I change it and how?

Help much appreciated

hey there swiss, can you check to see if port 443 is open on your firewall it needs to be open.

right, okay you need to click into control panel and then click on the security icon and then click on the firewall option from there you should be able to open up HTTP (80), HTTPS (443) and FTP (21)" Im not the best at sorting out firewall problems so if somebody else could verify that I have given correct information that would be great.

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no you are pretty much correct, it would be under control panel, but if i may ask, what OS are you running on, becuase i had a similar problem where i couldnt access some secure sites, and it was becuase of firewalls, just as justingh said.

and since it has to do with a ports as you said, then if your OS is XP, do this to add programs to run and to open and except ports.

1st, go to control panel
2nd, go to windows firewall
Then, click on the Exceptions tab and make sure that your version of IE is checked off.
Then if its the port situation, then continue on the Exceptions tab except you will see a little button near the very bottom middle...click on add ports. then for the name, type in a name that you would normally see like the name of the site or whatever you choose, then type in the IP adresses of the sites you cannot access.

if you still have a problem, please let us know

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What is a physical body. The body is merely an object. It is a form of existence far too impure to store the gods within us called souls. Now you will remember. The bloodstained history. Material desire. Hunger. Sexual Drive. Desire to dominate. Desire for fame. Humanity. As long as there is a body, desires will be born. The human ego will never disappear as long as desire remains present. Humans will continue to fight to fulfill their bodies desires and it will never end. At this rate there is no future.

Personally, I'd recommend going with Zone Alarm (free) or one of the other free firewalls that are out there. Products like Zone Alarm are application based, and it asks when the application tries to access the network. While windows firewall is okay, I like the features of Zone alarm (such as locking the hosts file among other things).

Downside: There is not a zone alarm for 64 bit windows XP.

Getting to the firewall can be done in the control panel, yes, details vary with your OS version (as to how to adjust the firewall), and firewall (windows, zonealarm...). But, the firewall wasn't around till XP-SP2 from M$.

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Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

yea true, zone alarm may be the best firewall out there cept for NOD32 which is mad nice. i love it. but ya zone alarm is very user friendly and does give you simple notifications when you need it, but im not entirely sure this was what he was asking for and also i dont think it will solve the fact that he cant access certain secured websites. but hey maybe it turned into something he wanted!!

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What is a physical body. The body is merely an object. It is a form of existence far too impure to store the gods within us called souls. Now you will remember. The bloodstained history. Material desire. Hunger. Sexual Drive. Desire to dominate. Desire for fame. Humanity. As long as there is a body, desires will be born. The human ego will never disappear as long as desire remains present. Humans will continue to fight to fulfill their bodies desires and it will never end. At this rate there is no future.

Yes zone alarm would be a good idea, but if you can afford to buy it get NOD32. But Swiss this will not solve your situation you need to follow the previous instructions given as GHOST375 said.

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Well, the application based firewall will make it easier for the firewall to open the proper ports for the secure sites.

As to the other, he may not have the proper patch level / security software for the secure sites. He may not have his browser settings set to a secure enough level, and the web site can tell that rather eaisly. Normally, it gives you the error message stating your encryption is not high enough, or your are missing a specific plug-in.

Considering it is a cross browser problem, it could be that he needs to update his JAVA, or that it is a McAfee firewall problem. I've seen it do that several times. I don't remember the steps for the McAfee security center to unblock specific ports, sad to say.

Remember, many of the "anti-virus" softwares now are a suite which include firewalls. So, this begs the question of the OP:

What antivirus program are you using?

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

ehh, im almost positive that it doesnt have to do with java, only becuase java has almost nothing to do with security, but then again like i said im not sure, but i really dont think it has to do with java. and although having an application firewall does make it easier for a person to MANAGE their ports and other things, they dont automatically open ports and give permissions to the users.

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What is a physical body. The body is merely an object. It is a form of existence far too impure to store the gods within us called souls. Now you will remember. The bloodstained history. Material desire. Hunger. Sexual Drive. Desire to dominate. Desire for fame. Humanity. As long as there is a body, desires will be born. The human ego will never disappear as long as desire remains present. Humans will continue to fight to fulfill their bodies desires and it will never end. At this rate there is no future.

I agree, on all you have said, Ghost375.

What I meant was (and I may not have said what I meant) was that sometimes the secure website requires JAVA for it's code to work across browsers and OS' (mac, Linux...)(cross-platform). Without it, the site will not load. Again, usually, the site gives some better info as to the JAVA requirement. It could be that the original poster needs a newer version of JAVA, or as he stated that when using Firefox, if he's using NoScript, that it needs to allow the scripts on that site. But since IE also has problems, I too agree that it is undoubtedly not JAVA.

The statements about the error that IE shows and the problem happens in FF as well, also lend to the diagnosis about the firewall. However, even windows firewall will let https go through (I know, I must use that since no zonealarm for 64 bit).

I have seen the McAfee firewall do stuff like this, and if the user has McAfee's suite, either as an OEM install, or as an add-on from AOL (they provide it to their subscribers), it could very well be blocking the ports. On it you MUST open specific ports.

I don't know as much about Norton's firewall... I won't install Norton's AV/Firewall on my machines.

__________________
I'm here, you may now make your next two wishes.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Use Windows!!

Every Piece of Electronic Equipment runs on a finite amount of smoke. The systems are normally very efficient at reclaiming the smoke and recycling it, however, should you do something to let the smoke out, your system will become useless.

SAVE THE SMOKE !!

New PC :
New: Phenom 9500 Quad 2.2, 4gb ram XP Pro 64-bit (Sata 0), XP Pro 32 bit (sata 1), 40 eide HDD (music), Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner, HP Multidisk CD-RW/DVD-Rom, 2x250 Seagate HDD's, ATI Radeon 3870, Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP

Old PC:
P4 1.5GHz, 768 Ram, hda-80Gb (80Ubuntu), DVD R/RW

you are very correct, and i probobly didnt understand what you were saying

__________________
What is a physical body. The body is merely an object. It is a form of existence far too impure to store the gods within us called souls. Now you will remember. The bloodstained history. Material desire. Hunger. Sexual Drive. Desire to dominate. Desire for fame. Humanity. As long as there is a body, desires will be born. The human ego will never disappear as long as desire remains present. Humans will continue to fight to fulfill their bodies desires and it will never end. At this rate there is no future.

That is biggest thing to figure out the config and then the access points.

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