Software : Experienced
Hardware : Advanced
System specs: XP Home, Pentium 4
Internet Connection: Verizon DSL, Wired / Wireless
Firewall : Sygate Security Agent
Anti-virus: Norton AV Corporate Edition
Browsers: IE, Firefox, Safari
Recent changes: Moved from Cable to Verizon DSL

I am encountering problem accessing mails in couple of my desktop computers.
Hotmail : Not opening the page after I am providing the userid and password.
mail: same as above
Yahoo: Getting error message while sending the mail.
Unable to logout in internet explorer.
gmail: working fine.

I have no problem with my laptop which is also using the same network connection.

Have you cleared your cache and deleted cookies?

Up to date on all MS patches?

Tried it with pop-up blocker and anti-virus turned off?

titewad said:Have you cleared your cache and deleted cookies?
Yes, I did, same problem. Even I installed Safari for the first time in my computer after encountering this problem.

Up to date on all MS patches?
Autometic update was on. But when I tried to check manually, it failed with standard error message - "Website has encountered a problem..... ". I checked all the settings recommended by MS, but no luck. So MS patches are not up-to-date.

Tried it with pop-up blocker and anti-virus turned off?
yes, closed all possible processes inlcuding firewall and AV.

Additional info: Most of the time CPU usage is also normal, very low, 0~5%.

For test purposes, disable your Sygate and try again

ellory said:For test purposes, disable your Sygate and try again
Yes, I did.

mom2jel said:Do you have Spy-Bot running & blocking changes to your browsers?
No, I do not use spy-Bot.

Have you tried starting in Safe-mode w/networking to see if you can access the email?
will check today & get back to you.

Have you tried accessing the emails through Windows Live, Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird? (You can use YPOPS for Yahoo - although I haven't been able to *send* Yahoo email for the past month). BTW, Windows Live will allow you to use newer hotmail accounts when OE or Outlook<2007 won't. You can also configure gmail (POP) to work with any of those email clients.
I want to keep on using standard way of using the emails. If it's not resolved, I will try to configure the work arround.

Btw, the default for hotmail is Windows live & it's not working.

You may want to give this a try - Dial-A-Fix - it has a very simple layout, just click a button to choose Repair Windows Updates and let it run a bunch of fixes for you. They are all standard Update fixes, nothing special in there, but it runs them all for you with one click. I've used this on a lot of machines to fix Update issues because it is just plain easier than going through all the steps myself.

Don't Hotmail and Yahoo both use Java? Could it be a Java issue?

minidrag said:Forgot about the Email issue - if Safe Mode works, try Start, Run, MSCONFIG and choose Diagnostic Startup. If that works, start turning the different items on one at a time until you find the one that breaks things.

Sygate was the culprit. Yesterday when I checked it, I did saw all the processes in Windows task manager and closed all Sygate applications. But the problem did not resolved, so may be some process was still running even though it was not displaying.

I am using it for long time, never had this issue. Even now, when I see all applications on Sygate, I do not see these sites are blocked. So I think they may had recently embedded in the engine to stop accessing these sites ( all sort of mails, StarZ Play etc) by default as it's corporate edition.

Also, though manual process failed, Windows update also triggered automatically.

Now I need a good alternative firewall. I have WebRoot Spy Sweeper, zone alarm, McAfee, Norton etc. Which one shall I use?

Another vote for Comodo