Firefox works but I.E. and Chrome do not

I have windows XP on my laptop and I have 3 browsers installed. They are
Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. Firefox is my browser of
choice, the one I use the most frequent. Recently I tried to get on Chrome
and I was not able to. Then I tried IE and had the same problem. Both
browsers give me the same message, "webpage not available". The problem is
obviously not my connection, as Firefox is still working. I mentioned this
problem on Facebook & was told by someone that I should not have more than
two browsers? Other research I have come across says that it does not matter,
I can have as many browsers as I choose. Does it really matter if I have
more than two? I used to use only IE but it kept crashing on me, so I added
the other two "just in case". I recently had a Mal ware problem that I was
able to get rid of. Am wondering if this browser problem may have been
caused by that? Not sure when problem started as I haven't tried to get on
Chrome or IE in quite awhile. Anybody have any suggestions on what the
problem may be and how to correct it? Plain English please. Heavy tech talk
sometimes confuses me. lol

On 31/01/2010 18:13, mindydee113 via WindowsKB.com wrote:
> I have windows XP on my laptop and I have 3 browsers installed. They
> Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. Firefox is my browser
< ... snip ... >
> sometimes confuses me. lol


Hi Mindy,

Firstly, be aware that you posted your question via an Internet leech
site: WindowsKB.com. That site has no relationship to Microsoft, rather
it slurps down public content from the *real* Windows newsgroups, in
order to drive its advertising revenue. Advenet LLC run a whole string
of these pseudo-discussion boards: petskb.com, photokb.com, etc.

The "real" Microsoft Windows XP newsgroup is at:

[URL="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups/reader.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsxp.general"]http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups/reader.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsxp.general[/URL]

That site is the original, the genuine and the best Windows XP forum.

Anyway, on to your question. There is no problem with having multiple
browsers installed. In fact I have IE, Firefox and Chrome installed on
my main PC and use them all, sometimes at the same time. So you should
not have any problem there.

If you can reach a "well-known" website (say, [URL="http://www.google.com"]http://www.google.com[/URL])
from one browser, eg Firefox, but not from the others, that suggests
that your basic Internet connection is okay; and the problem is local to
your PC.

Do you have a Firewall installed and running? Such as Norton, Symantec,
or the built-in Windows Firewall. One reason why one browser can reach
teh Internet and others can't, could be that the 2 non-working browsers
(IE and Chrome) are being blocked by your firewall. Go into your
firewall settings, and make sure that these programs have explicit
permission to connect to the Internet. The exact steps required will
depend on what kind of firewall you have. But hopefully it will be
semi-obvious.

Firefox is my favourite browser; but they all have pros and cons.

Other folks may have extra ideas; hope this helps a bit.

Andrew