A Guy's second suggestion worked for me (kind of).
I could not find any "wrench icon" but clicking on the Google "g" to the left of the search box makes a menu appear and choosing the "manage" item in that menu takes me to the Google search bar options. In the "Search" tab, under "Web browsing tools" I Un-checked the "Provide suggestions for incorrect or unavailable URLs'"
And low and behold....
I still can not reach the sites in question. Except now I get a generic Internet explorer "page can not be found page".
So what is the problem?
FIRST of all what it is NOT
1) It is not the sites. I have this problem for major sites like flickr.com and youtube.com.
I just got it again at
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
2) It is NOT an obvious hardware failure of my internet connection. All was working fine on our XP boxes but since buying new computers, we get the "Oops" at fairly frequent random intervals, on both the new Win7 boxes.
What it may be
3) At first blush, Google was attempting to provide a cache page but that was masking the real problem that IE on Windows 7 really is not finding the websites. However, Envy17 claims that the problem disappears when the Google Search bar is uninstalled. So perhaps there is some race condition, or other incompatability between the google search bar and IE on Win7.
4) My network set up. Perhaps Win7 is more sensitive to the way that the network is set up, such that *for example*
4.1) if my IP changes (I have a dynamic IP) then PERHAPS Win7 will temporarily fail to connect to the Internet unless I change Win7 setup somewhere to tell it to keep renegotiating an new IP.
4.2) if the other computer on the network is sending data or using the same address or something, then perhaps I can not connect. Perhpas something is wrong with the setup of my home network.
I am NOT suggesting that either of the above is the problem, but perhaps there is something more sensitive about the Internet connection/Network set up in Win7
4.3) I see that on
one of the forums where this problem is mentioned someone suggests shutting down the WIN7 service DNS Client. I have a feeling that this is getting to the nub of the problem.
Anyway IE on Win7 keeps failing to find major sites and it is a pain, so suggestions would be very welcome.
It seems to be a problem with IE because my maxthon browser gets to the same sites from the same favourites links at the same time as IE fails to get there. I.e. I click on a favourite link to youtube in IE and I get the page can not be displayed error page. I immediately move to Maxthon (which shares favourites with IE) click on the same favourite and youtube is displayed.
