Hello ! The past couple of days, there has been some updates for windows defender, after installing these latest signature files, my browsers (IE7 and Mozilla) both stop working, they just open without displaying either content or error messages. Rolling back to a system restore point before updating Defender solves the problem temporarily until the next Defender update is downloaded and installed. It has worked fine so far up to the signature definition 1.31.8762.0 where both browsers stopped. No logging data from firewall shows conflict (using PCTools firewall) disabling this and using Windows Firewall did not solve the problem, only by rolling back to a previous restore point could the browsers resume connection. Other programs seem to connect fine, antivirus can check for updates etc. Running XP Home Premium with SP1 installed, All suggestions welcome !

Hi, in order to narrow down the issue, I suggest first performing a Clean Boot to test if the issue occurs in the Clean Boot mode. 1. Click Start, type "MSCONFIG" (without the quotations) in the Search Bar and Press "Enter" to start the System Configuration Utility. Note: Please click Continue if the "User Account Control" window pops up. 2. Click the "Services" tab, check the "Hide All Microsoft Services" box and click "Disable All" (if it is not gray). 3. Click the "Startup" tab, click "Disable All" and click "OK". 4. Restart the computer and test the issue. Note: Clean Boot is a troubleshooting step. If some programs have been disabled, we can re-enable them later. If you see the System Configuration Utility, check the box of "Don't show this message" and then click "OK". Please test this result in the Clean Boot environment.

My wife's computer is having a strange problem that may be related. Hotmail partially works, it won't take a password and the Hotmail messages never come up using IE7. Also, something is stopping us from logging into other password pages. This is only happening on her computer (HP). I have 3 other computers that are working fine. Also, Visual Studio 2005 will no longer let her open a project. This is has been happening for last two or three days.There must be an update that is causing this.

Hi, I think I solved the original problem, it seems that some of the updates changed the signature of the traffic and caused a firewall conflict (although both browser programs as such were still on the allowed list). I couldn't solve it by modifying the rules for the firewall program, but I removed it and installed Comodo v3, afterwards it has worked so far. Quite annoying that although automatic updates are disabled, sometimes the updates are installed anyway as can be seen from the update log

I have the same issue. I did the clean boot like you said also. I noticed kb915597 was the only failed upate and it says connot be removed . My computer is clean. Some pages, including some Microsoft pages dont work anymore. After a long wait, I get clean white page.Sometimes after long wait I get page cannot found msg.I reinstalled the network adepters also. Wireless or wired networking same result. Firewalls are down. Weird! Contact meplease at jorjj2000 (at) hotmail (.) com.

I stumbled upon this post searching for an explanation as to whywindows and defenderhave been updating so much lately, it seems like every day I come home there's more updates to install. My windows update history shows sporadic updates throughout the month, but it seems like every day I come home latelysomething else needs to be updated... Someone asked if its bad that it keeps updating, Isaidthe updates themselves are ok, it's the frequency of them allthat irks me.... Anyway... After restarting following some defender updates it stopped displaying pages on both browsers, but oddly still sending requests to the router.I dropped the firewall and it worked ok.I have wireshark installed on my pc, and once I restartedagain, it was started. I'm not a guru, and don't know exactly what i was looking at, but basically data was hitting the router and i was getting errors back, bothon the router and on cpu. Bottom line was that Once I restarted again,Norton gave me a popup and I had to allow svchost.exe port 64877 and all is functioning properly! (hope it's ok, searches for that port on the net revealed nothing..) Hope it helps someone!