Beginning about a week ago, I started receiving ?cannot find page?
messages from Internet Explorer
(6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 for Windows XP SP2).  On
reboot page access would work as normal for 5-20 min and then fail
again.

The diagnostics done to date:

Telnet www.google.com 80 will work before the hang and not after
leading me to conclude that this is not IE related

IE will connect to web sites on any other port (have tried several
between 8000 ? 9000) in http mode and in https mode on 443 even after
the hang

Does not appear to be DNS related as connect on IP does not work any better

I have scanned the machine with Trend Micro AntiVirus, Webroot?s web
sweeper, Ad-Aware SE Pro, Spybot Search & Destroy and found nothing.
(Have also tried removing all of these tools except Trend Mico)

I have run WinsockxpFix.exe and checked the process list for anything
unexpected.  I have also tried the machine on multiple networks (at
work and at home) using both built in wireless and wi-fi.

Most recent machine change before this occurred is the removal of AT&T
Global Net dialer.

The machine used to have Bluetooth on it, but that has been removed to
make sure it was not the problem.


If I cannot solve this soon I will be forced to re-install windows,
loosing a significant amount of time and money in the process.

---

Request for Question Clarification by seizer-ga on 03 Mar 2006 11:26 PST

Hi Burrichi -

I suspect you've fallen afoul of a Windows XP Service Pack 2
"feature", which limits outgoing traffic to 10 simultaneous
connections per port. Some program on your machine may be behaving
badly (not necessarily spyware, just something which leaves the
connections open on that port).

To determine whether this is happening, check your event log (Click
Start --> Run --> and type "eventvwr". Read through your event log and
check for any events which happened at the time of the problem which
say:

Event ID 4226: TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the
number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.

If you are receiving these messages, it may be the cause of your port
80 problem, and you'll be pleased to hear there is a solution!

--seizer

---

Clarification of Question by buricchi-ga on 06 Mar 2006 12:57 PST

Unfortunately there is no such event manager message.  The interesting
part is that the machine (and internet) remains functional except for
port 80.

Might there be a firewall that is blocking port 80, but for some
reason is taking this long to get the firewall started? What about
other browsers? Can they connect to via port 80 even after IE won't?

-JtB

Nope, no firewall (or more should I say... it still fails when not
behind one).  All applications connecting to port 80 fail including
telnet, firefox, and java apps.  The machine has also been tried on
several networks.

And if you reboot into safe mode with networking support. Do you still
get this problem? If so, then you may have a problem with one of the
programs that load on startup.

-JtB

It does run properly in safemode.  I removed all startup items from
HKLM:Run and the Startup folder, but it still fails in normal mode.