Can’t Access Secure Site

Many of my clients have run into this problem lately – can’t access secure sites such as internet banking, e-mail, online stores, etc and they are all being blocked. Https sites in general are not displaying.

In order to fix this issue first we need to check any firewall software you may have running. Norton Internet Security (Norton’s firewall) is notorious for randomly deciding to block any HTTPS sites it finds randomly. Even a small misconfiguration will make it’s “privacy service” freak out and stop secure sites from loading. In fact, even when Norton’s firewall is disabled it will still cause errors.

If you don’t have a Symantec product, then skip this portion. If you do, then open up Norton Internet Security (NIS) and click on the Personal Firewall link. Following that, click on the Configure button. When that window opens, select the Advanced tab and click on General. Scroll down through the rules list and highlight Block access to secure sites, click on Modify, set to permit, click on OK. Click OK to close the other windows and try to access your site. If Norton was the issue, it should now work.

If that didn’t do the trick, or you don’t have NIS, then attempt this next little doozie. Click on Start->Run and type (copy/paste) the following commands into it, pressing OK after each one:

Regsvr32 Initpki.dll
Regsvr32 Dssenh.dll
Regsvr32 Gpkcsp.dll
Regsvr32 Sccbase.dll
Regsvr32 Slbcsp.dll
Regsvr32 Mssip32.dll
Regsvr32 Cryptdlg.dll
Regsvr32 Softpub.DLL
Regsvr32 Wintrust.dll
Regsvr32 Rsaenh.dll

This will re-register the .dll’s that Internet Explorer uses to view sites that are secured and should hopefully restore access to port 443.

The final suggestion is, oddly enough, to make sure that your date/time are set properly. Some secure sites use session states, and if your computers time is out of whack they appear invalid. So, set your clock correctly and this alone may fix your problem.