Need Some help with Settings on Windows XP

Last night DH was wanting to access his Scottrade account, and couldn't. Wouldn't recognize his password or user name. Went to their help site, and they said to go to tools, internet options, connections, lan settings, then advanced,and then to type in some address under the exceptions box. I did that, but it did not fix his problems, but created one for me.

Today, was reading in a forum and someone had posted a link to an article which I wanted to see, but when I click on the link, it will not take me there. I have a laptop with vista, and got on it, and I could view the link.

Evidently, I changed some setting on the XP, and need to know which one it was, and what it should be set to to view the links posted in the chat forums.

Thanks for anybody's help. I would like to just use one computer, instead of having them both running, and having to switch to the Vista to view links.