"Safari can't connect to the Internet"

I get this message every single time I try to open any web page in Safari (ver. 2.0) after I've logged on and started Safari afresh. After several hours of frustration one night, I realized that Safari was automatically selecting a proxy server for me when I had specified in Safari Advanced Preferences that I wanted to "Manually" Configure Proxies.

So each time I start Safari after logging on, I have to go to Safari Preferences -> Advanced, choose to change proxy settings, then de-select the proxy server that it is trying to configure for me (under "Select a proxy server to configure") and apply the change before I can open a web site. The one it always chooses for me is "Web Proxy (HTTP)".

Has anyone else encountered this problem? If so, how have you gotten Safari to stop going against your wishes in this respect? I'm glad I found out how to solve this problem manually, but really, what a pain! I'm about ready to try a different broswer - Safari is ticking me off more and more.

p.s. I'm on dial-up, if this is of any help.

I'm glad to report that I've found the solution to my problem: a third-party "Fast Dial-Up" provided by my ISP (Telus) that decided to mess with my proxy settings. Obviously, if you're a Telus dial-up customer, I would NOT recommend that you pay an extra $2.95/month for this service. It's also an incredible processor and memory hog.

Hope this helps someone avoid the problems I've had lately! And no, I'm not upset with Safari anymore, but rather embarrassed that I got so ticked-off at it before finding the real problem.

How do I figure out if I have fast-dail up? No one here seems to know! I think I am having basically the same problem.