Firefox help wanted!

[venta]

This morning, Firefox is flatly refusing to load any pages - including my webmail, and the pages I need for work. All I'm seeing is the little pop-up box which says "this document contains no data".

In an attempt to fix this, I clicked on the little red update-icon, and it claimed it was downloading a file, but then couldn't complete the installation process. Restarting Windows and Firefox, I tried to download updates again, whereupon it said it couldn't find the update servers. The little red update-icon has, however, now gone away. Help->About Mozilla claims I'm now running version 1.0.3[*],so I guess the update has worked in some sense.

This document still contains no data, though.

I don't think my connection's at fault, because the likes of puTTy can talk to the outside world. So far, the only site Firefox will happily load appears to be livejounal. Does anyone have any suggestions ?

[*] Which I wasn't running before, and which was the version I was expecting to upgrade to, even though this page http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/start/#mBody (which I can load) advertsises v1.0.4 as an upgrade (which I can't download).

Update: I don't think it's Firefox's fault, actually, since IE can't load any of these pages either. At least IE behaves sensibly/gives error messages/tells me it can't download things :(

Comments

[antoniosteve.livejournal.com]

I've had the exact same problem this morning, except that a number of my other applications couldn't connect either - my line of thinking was that it was an NTL-related lack of internet access - my firefox could load all the pages that I assume are cached on my computer, but nothing else.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I'd blame NTL's proxies, which is why it only affects web traffic. Why LiveJournal works, I've no idea (given that even NTL's own status page doesn't).

[zotz]

At one point NTL's Cambridge proxies were mostly broken. The fix was to find one that wasn't and specifically set it as your proxy rather than letting them assign a proxy automatically.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I've had similar troubles with Firefox's automatic update just not doing anything. Downloading the latest version independently and installing it does the trick, but that and the security holes has robbed Firefox of the "it's wonderful in every way" sheen for me (tho' still my browser of choice).

NTL Status Update

[wimble.livejournal.com]

They've finally updated their status web page.

Posted at 11:34, and a problem since 10:50 (which is clearly not true)

Oxford Browsing Unavailable

Detail

ntl broadband customers in Oxford and the surrounding areas may experience a loss to Internet web page browsing. Our engineers are aware and working to restore service as soon as possible.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Bypassing proxies

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

I thought you could usually bypass most proxies by appending a question mark to the end of the URL?

Or you could use an ISP that doesn't insist on using "invisible" proxies to bugger up your browsing.