Can't open any links - Help please someone!

[Zazu]

Hi all, well this is a problem with my PC. If a friend sends me a link to anything in MSN or Skype, or any other program for that matter, whenever I try to click on it to open it nothing happens, no programs will actually open any links in my internet broswer. It happens in Steam as well, I'm trying to buy a game, and when I get to the bit that says that it will direct me to the paypal website so I can complete my transaction and i try to click on the button to do this and it doesn't work, no FF windows open. If anyone could shed some light on the matter that would be great.

BTW: I'n running Windows XP Pro SP2, and it doesn't open the links in Internet Exporer 7 or FireFox.

[Glasgow]

*cough*

http://www.avantbrowser.com/

:)

Just try it, and go into Internet Options or Tools and see if anything isnt checked.

[Phantom]

or just copy and past the link into your address bar

[Zazu]

Thanks for the help so far but I still need to try to get it to work so that i can open links from Steam, I really want to buy a game lol. So, anything else?

[Elscire]

i still use firefox, i don't like IE anymore

[Kiros]

Try downloading the most up-to-date MSN Messenger (Live) from http://www.msn.com/ (yes, you'll have to go into the Messenger section) and install it (while making sure you have closed out your MSN Messenger so that it doesn't even appear in the system tray).

Next, open up Internet Explorer and go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ - go to the custom update and install everything that you can see (after waiting for some results to pop up).

Restart your computer. If your symptoms do not change, although this is rare for it to affect a messenger, you might have some odd spyware, adware, or malware. Who knows, let's assume you have all of it. Make sure you have Spybot - Search & Destroy and AdAware (the latest version downloads can be found in a stickey in this forum). Next, make sure you update both of them as much as possible. Do a full, complete, deep scan (no quick or smart scans). Then remove any malicious jazz the scans find. Remember, do not run both programs at once. It's best to run one, remove it's findings, then run the other, and remove those findings as well.

Then restart your computer.

By now, it should be fixed if it was caused by out-dated software or (for some reason) some kind of malware. If the issue is not resolved by the time you have done all this, come back and slap me in the face. I'll see what else I can think of... :)

[Zazu]

Try downloading the most up-to-date MSN Messenger (Live) from http://www.msn.com/ (yes, you'll have to go into the Messenger section) and install it (while making sure you have closed out your MSN Messenger so that it doesn't even appear in the system tray).

Next, open up Internet Explorer and go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ - go to the custom update and install everything that you can see (after waiting for some results to pop up).

Restart your computer. If your symptoms do not change, although this is rare for it to affect a messenger, you might have some odd spyware, adware, or malware. Who knows, let's assume you have all of it. Make sure you have Spybot - Search & Destroy and AdAware (the latest version downloads can be found in a stickey in this forum). Next, make sure you update both of them as much as possible. Do a full, complete, deep scan (no quick or smart scans). Then remove any malicious jazz the scans find. Remember, do not run both programs at once. It's best to run one, remove it's findings, then run the other, and remove those findings as well.

Then restart your computer.

By now, it should be fixed if it was caused by out-dated software or (for some reason) some kind of malware. If the issue is not resolved by the time you have done all this, come back and slap me in the face. I'll see what else I can think of... :)

Cheers! I'll give all of that a go.