Thinkpads Forum

this has been like this for a very long time,but finally would like to resolve this if possible.this is the only laptop that wont access paypal.com.i have tried IE,Modzilla Firefox 3,cleared private data,cookies cleared,scanned computer with eset nod 32,cleaned & scanned registry.if anyone can help me out that would be great.

Assuming for the moment that you are running a Windows OS, I'd check the "hosts" files to see if somebody/something has blocked you from going to paypal.com. That file should be in "c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc" (Windows XP; not sure about Vista) and is a simple text file which can be opened with Notepad. Don't use any other word processing programs unless you are sure that you are saving it as a pure text file. If there's something like "127.0.0.1 www.paypal.com" in the file, delete that line and save the file.

...and I can confirm that the "hosts" path is the same for Vista and even Windows 7 (both 32bit and 64bit) as the one in XP...

hey that worked.wow.its been like this for like almost 3yrs.The only thing it said was for paypal & nothing else.thats weird.Again thanks

Normally there should be a line in that file with "127.0.0.1 localhost". If it's missing, I don't think that it will cause too many problems but I'm not totally sure about that. The IP address 127.0.0.1 basically points to your own system; a "loopback". I use this same technique to block access to some ad sites so that their graphics don't appear in the browser.

this is what it said.i saved it just in case it didn't work.
127.0.0.1 local host
www.paypal.com
http://paypal.com
http://www.paypal.com

i deleted all this ,now it works.is that ok to delete all?

i deleted the 127.0.0.1 local host file & the paypal sites in other words

Put this back;

127.0.0.1 local host

ok will do.thanks