IE7 problems

vrmlguy writes: "Today my family's computer (running Windows XP Home) told us that an automatic update was available for installation. I gave permission for the update to be installed and wound up with a new installation of IE7. Unfortunately, after the required reboot I quickly discovered that we could no longer access the web. DNS resolved everything that I gave it and I could ping the resulting IP addresses, but I couldn't open HTTP connections outside of my local subnet. Telnet'ing to port 80 also didn't work, so it apparently wasn't just a problem with IE7.

Fortunately, IE7 did provide a nice diagnostic tool that decided that the ports for FTP, HTTP and HTTPS were all unavailable and suggested that I investigate my firewall settings. Interestingly enough, it turns out that I'd disabled Windows Firewall some time ago, because I trust my dedicated router/firewall to keep the black-hats out of my home. Turning to my work laptop (which could still access the outside world), I quickly found a web page that strongly recommended leaving the firewall on during the install. Need I say that I wasn't very surprised by the implication that IE7 can break other programs' access to the Internet?

The good news is that uninstalling IE7 fixed everything. Until I can get more information about what happened, I've told Windows Update to not try re-installing IE7.

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