I have noticed an intermittent problem, throughout both my office and
personal networks, which I would like to get help with.  It seems that
certain computers in my networks have trouble getting to particular
secure (https, SSL) web sites.  For example, my CEO's computer has
trouble getting to eBay's secure site, our warehouse computer cannot
get to Paypal's secure site, and one employee cannot get to his bank's
secure site.  It will always say page not found.  It will also
generate that error so fast that it leads me to believe that it
doesn't even try to make the connection, however I'm not certain of
that.  I find this very bizarre because there doesn't seem to be
common denominator, at least one that I can see.  It's not all SSL
sites, or all computers, or always a particular secure site.  My
computer never seems to have this problem.  What could possibly cause
such a problem?  We all connect to the Internet using the same router
and share that routers external IP address.  Each computer may connect
to that router in different ways, i.e. through different switches.  We
all use Bullguard.com virus software and Microsoft's spyware software
(however this problem occurred before we implemented the Microsoft
software).  We all run Windows 2000.  Any help would be greatly
appreciated.  Thank you for your time and consideration.

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Clarification of Question by johngl-ga on 25 Jan 2005 20:25 PST

This problem only happens with Microsoft Internet Explorer. 
Installing Netscape seems to clear this problem however we cannot use
Netscape so it's not a solution I can live with.  I haven't tried
Netscape on all computers however when I have it worked.

Is the explorer set to except these sites through internet options?
Are there cookies turned on? Do the have there own firewalls. Do they
have the xp firewall turend on?

Is the explorer set to except these sites through internet options?

- They can get to most secure sites so yes.

Are there cookies turned on? 

- Yes in all cases

Do the have there own firewalls. Do they have the xp firewall turend on?
 
- Bullguard is a firewall and on all computers.  We all use Windows
2000 so we can't have the XP firewall on.

Have you cheked to make sure that you internet explorer is using  128
bit encryption? Have you tried deleteing all of the temporary files on
these computers? It could very well be do to spyware. You can get
lavasoft from download.com and run it on these machines or you can
also get hijack this and run it and post your log.

http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html

This is just a strange hunch I have.  I had a similar problem with
checking my gmail a few months ago.  Have you played with the Local
Security Settings on the machines in question?  Open secpol.msc via
the Run... dialog and go to Local Policies->Security Policies and then
scroll down to the bottom.  Find the option "System Cryptography: Use
FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption,..." and make sure it is set
to Disabled.  If you can't find the Local Security Settings control
panel, go into the Control Panel and then into Administrative Tools. 
It should also be there.

Besides that I would highly suggest switching to Firefox -
http://www.mozilla.org .  Netscape is just rebranded Mozilla products.