Internet blocked (running Norton Internet Security or similar)

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I came across a few instances where people complained that they were unable to access Internet any more. There can be many reasons for that varying from hardware failure to some problem in settings.

One of the very common reason that I have seen in recent times is if you are using some Security program like Norton Internet Security that has some firewall which prevents a program from accessing the internet. Following are the steps for Norton Internet Security:

Start Norton Internet Security.

1. In the main window, click Norton Internet Security tab.
2. Click Settings.
3. Under Web Browsing, click Personal Firewall and then click Configure.
4. In the left side of Norton Internet Security Options window, click Personal Firewall and then click Program Control.
5. In the Program Column, select the specific program (Internet Explorer or any other browser that you use).
6. Change the Access from Block or Custom to Allow.
7. Click OK.

This should enable the internet access for you. For other programs, visit the following website to learn more:

Firewall Blocking Internet

Download YouTube videos

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Not just YouTube but most of the websites sharing some form of videos have shifted to Flash format (.flv files). There are websites that can download these videos for you but do you really need to go to another website to download these ??

Follow these simple steps to download videos from YouTube (and other similar websites):

1. You need to install a player for .flv files. You can search on Google for free flv player. Here is the link to the one I use:

FLV Player

2. To download a video from YouTube, just play the video using Internet Explorer. Once it is fully played, go to Tools menu –> Internet Options. Under Browing History, click on Settings and then click View Files. It will open the Temporary Files Folder in your hard drive. You can sort the files by name or size (or even type) and look for a file with name starting with ‘get_video‘ (without any file extension).

3. Copy and paste this file some where in your computer and add an extension (.flv) to it. Play it with the FLV Player you downloaded earlier.

Hurray !!!

Even the videos from other websites, which are in flash format, can be downloaded and played using the above steps. They may already have .flv extension or may not like in case of YouTube.

Tip: If you want to reduce the effort in finding the file in Temporary Files Folder, clean your your browsing history before you play the file. For this, go to Tools menu –> Internet Options –> Delete Browsing History.. and click Delete All and selet the box for Also delete files and settings stored by Add-ons and click yes.

Note: Make sure you follow the copyright guidelines of the material you want to download.

Update:

I was having some trouble with the FLV players available so I searched a bit more. Even the famous VLC player can play flv files but dragging the progress bar was putting a stop to the playback. I found a better way. Enable your own Windows Media Player to play these files.

Download and install PlayFLV. While installation, it will ask you to install ffdshow. Install that also. Once the installation is complete, Window Media Player will be able to play flv files as well with all default functions, such as zooming, skipping and full screen view.