Messing about with an old HP laptop running XP – I performed a system recovery so now it’s back to the original HP build for XP and drivers.

It’s connected to the internet ok and the HP software updater worked and installed the latest versions of a few drivers. However, IE8 is flakey – is this simply because websites won’t support it?

e.g. I can’t access google or the BBC website, but eBay seems to work. Because of this, I couldn’t download Chrome, so I installed Firefox instead, but this is no better.

Is this simply due to the age of IE8/XP or is there some setting that is preventing access to these website?

you can’t access google? wtf?
i cock about with customer pcs at work that still run xp and haven’t run in to that.
sommat else going on.

First thing I’d check is what your DNS is set to – that’s often a reason for some sites being inaccessible; it may be a relic from the original setup and not very current. Maybe change it to 8.8.8.8 which is Google’s.

Another possibility is Windows Update. I don’t know what MS did in general once XP came off support; at work, we still had XP until last year but the company had a deal with MS to keep it supported – but that involved locking down which sites you could see.

However, IE8 is flakey – is this simply because websites won’t support it?

IE8 is generally not supported and lacks a lot of modern HTML/CSS features/standards, but if you can’t access the basics like Google, then there’s something else wrong or blocking things. As said, might be a security update has basically blocked everything. Might be able to add sites to the security zones to allow them.

Do you really need XP on that laptop? Do you need Windows even? Could just stick a Linux install on it instead.

Something is wrong, we still have IE8 at work and whilst it can’t always run full sites it will fling you onto a mobile version where possible, BBC and Google should definitely work.

Not sure about needing to block sites either, that’s usually a comapny policy thing rather than licencing requirements, Bluecoat are the ones to blame there.

If the original build you’ve restored to is earlier than Service Pack 3 and you’ve connected it to the Internet, then the number of viruses it’ll have by now won’t be helping matters.

I’d have expected Google to still work with IE8, though it wouldn’t be a great leap to find that one day it didn’t; I was playing with a Server 2003 VM the other day which had (IIRC) IE6 installed, and Google just displayed a black page.

Regardless, the only thing I’d be using IE8 for would be to download Chrome.

It won’t open the Windows Update site either. Just wanted to see if the issue was fundamental or not so I’ll have a play later. Cheers for the replies.

My money’s on Conficker. Anyone else playing? (-:

All sorted. Eventually got to Windows Update via Firefox and IE now working as well as can be expected.