Firefox and Thunderbird can both access the web from my external USB hard disk.
FileZilla, Quite RSS, GreatNews, Opera and Skype all fail. If I run Skype from the internal hard disk it works fine. I uninstalled Skype and installed a new version. No change.
Does anyone have an idea as to where I should start looking please?
If I have posted in the wrong forum, please advise where I should ask.
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Some but not all apps unable to access web
January 22, 2014 - 2:30pm
#1
Some but not all apps unable to access web
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You're likely somewhere with a proxy to access the internet (business, university, etc). Firefox and Thunderbird will automatically use the local system's internet settings by default. Those other apps will not, so you will need to manually configure them. It's also possible that only specific apps are allowed by the proxy and Firefox and Thunderbird are on that allowed list while the others are not.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
This was at home. It is now resolved but even that is bizarre. The problem had occurred on two PCs and both started the problem today so I ruled another reply you had given about being able to write to a temp file. Maybe wrongly but I figured that would not happen on two machines at the same time.
Since posting, I linked the drive to my wife's laptop and it all worked just fine. Then I reconnected to my laptop and it is now working there!
I have had this happen before but only with QuiteRSS. Any further ideas would be welcome.
Thanks for your reply.
I have since found I my laptop is still OK but my desktop is not. Both are on the same network.
The portable apps also work OK on my office PC, it is just this one home desktop that is giving grief.
I am pretty PC literate and can happily rebuild a PC but proxy settings are outside my territory. Would you be able to tell me where to start and how to identify the settings I need?
I will be grateful for any assistance you can provide.
I changed QuiteRSS from the "Direct to Internet" setting that works on all other PCs to "Use System Default - If found" but it makes no difference. There is a manual option but I don't know what to enter there.
I tried installing Portable Apps on another drive and that reported that it could not connect to portableapps.com.
I don't know if that helps.
I suddenly noticed that Norton was not showing in the System Tray. I ran Norton and that has resolved the problem.