Just this last week, I discovered that my IE 7 and 8 can't use socks proxy anymore, as I was able to use it before. I am using putty for ssh connection with dynamic port forwarding in order to safely browse Internet from public places. When I enter Socks: localhost, or 127.0.0.1, and the port, for example 8080 in LAN Settings/Use proxy server/Advanced, leaving all the rest of the fields empty, IE can't browse the Internet anymore. Leaving putty running if I enter the same settings in Firefox I can normally browse using socks proxy. At the same time I can do nslookup and ping various wan/lan hosts. netstat -a shows localhost listening on port 8080. I tried the same with IE at work, using various work computers with the same luck. Just few weeks back I was able to easily use socks proxy with IE, which makes me think that the culprit most likely is a recent update. I tried with XP, Vista Pro and Windows 7 Home using IE 8 and 7. I would highly appreciate any help with the issue. boja0003

Hi, First, you should confirm if the issue occur when using other socks proxy, then confirm your setting is right. You can refer to this link: Change proxy server settings in Internet Explorer If the issue still exists, I suggest you can reset the Internet explorer 8 to see the result. By resetting Internet Explorer settings, you return it to the state it was in when it was first installed on your computer. This is useful for troubleshooting problems that might be caused by settings that were changed after installation. Here is the link: Reset Internet Explorer settings Hope it helps, Regards, Alex zhao