Can't load SSL sites using Microsoft Virtual PC Windows XP / IE 6 Image

Question

I'm trying to test my site in IE 6 using Microsoft's Win XP / IE 6 virtual machine image, but I'm unable to load any SSL site in either IE 6 or Firefox 2 inside of the virtual machine. Outside of the VM all sites load as expected, but inside it can't find the sites in either browser. Non-SSL sites load fine inside the VM.

For example, the Firefox 2.0.0.20 error message is 'Firefox can't find the server at secure.example.com.'

Does something special have to be enabled in the VM to allow connections to SSL sites?

Answer 1

Is there some sort of firewall setup on either the virtual machine or the host machine that might be blocking port 443 (HTTPS/SSL port)? This seems to be a likely culprit to me.

There is also another setting in security policy: "System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing, and signing." If this is set, you cannot connect to servers that aren't using TLS 1.0, most sites are not serving TLS 1.0, however this has only affected Internet Explorer, not Firefox in my past experience.

Answer 2

It turned out to be a DNS problem. I switched the DNS servers in the VM OS to use OpenDNS, and the sites came up without a problem.