IE 5.5 weird problem

hi peoples,
lately internet explorer has been doing some really odd things, at the moment im using DUN 1.4/ win '95/ IE 5.5 on a dial up connection, im also using adsubtract pro as a proxy thing.

the problem is that internet explorer and outlook express cant do anything that seems to involve http stuff (outlook can get mail from my pop server but not http mail (hotmail)), ive tried uninstall / reinstall with it to no sucess, netscape (ver 4.6 works ok at the moment and so does internet explorer ver. 4, but when i install 5.5 it wont work at all).

any suggestions on how i may be able to fix this without doing a full reformat??
or is there something that im missing out on to correct the problem, has anyone else ever had this trouble with this stuff??

It sounds to me like a problem with Adsubtract. Try either checking your settings, or removing it completely. That is the only thing you mentioned that would be able to block or filter HTTP. Also, maybe a firewall problem if you have one installed.

Make sure your browser goes through a proxy (have the IP that the proxy's at) and make sure the port for the proxy (1080, 8000, or something like that) is set. You might have 'autodetect proxy' set, but that might cause problems (I've seen that before).

Yea, it looks like your problems may lie in your proxy software. Check in your proxy software setup to see if you are blocking HTTP for any reason - check to ensure that there is not some HTTP proxy service running that may be blocking all of your HTTP. If you can't find anything within the setup of your proxy software, completly uninstall it and then just as a check, make sure you can receive HTTP. Then, since you still need to protect your machine, consider installing a software firewall such as Zone Alarm if you are not running a LAN. If you are running a LAN, you may want to look into another proxy software package.

Hope this helps...

thanks for all the ideas and suggestions everyone, ive got the feeling that it was probably the proxy causing the problem because ive got the firewall set up correctly for http requests.

im not sure how this could have happened but its all fine now but im not going back to IE very soon either, ive found opera 6 to be a bit better than IE so im gonna stick with that for now.