Re: OE Distress

Znep wrote:
In uk.rec.sheds, (Esra Sdrawkcab) wrote in
<ry9zj.34565$Ef1.24648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>::

Znep wrote:
In uk.rec.sheds, (Esra Sdrawkcab) wrote in
<nk8zj.34550$Ef1.23167@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>::

Znep wrote:
In uk.rec.sheds, (Esra Sdrawkcab) wrote in
<QNXyj.20660$ab5.14160@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>::

[]
I have a freind (cough) who has a PC wich apprently was all gung-ho on the interwibble, but "he didn't do anything", and it now will allow about 3 websites.

The DNs lookup seems OK (well I've pinged a few websites, and their IPs are alive) but even http'ing to the IP address gets nowhere.

This is XP SP2 running IE6.0, with firewall, all settings seem nothing out of the usual.

Any Ideas, fellow Sheddi?
Anything bizarre in the firewall log?
I didn't check that! - only dodgy thing I could see was the firewall had had an addition to allow a bittorrent client (now deleted). No weird processes running. can get google, but cant get onto the resulting websites. A couple of other frequently used websites function, but not amazon, yahoo or bbc news. I have prevented myself from clearing the browser cache. AFAICS the router is setup OK. At first I thought that it was a DNS problem (which is little out of my area). Cleared the DNScache, no go, reboot everything, still the same.
Disabled firewall, Still NoGo.
Baffled.

Might it be the ISP's end?
I'm speculating that web-browsing requires a reverse lookup? - so if his ISP-name has a wrong IP for returning html it goes missing? Nope 3 websites work.

No- HTML is returned to the port that's opened when you create the outgoing
session to port 80 on the server- there's no requirement for reverse DNS.

If you can't open a port 80 session to a numeric IP, there's worse than DNS
going wrong. Have the firewall rules become banjaxed? The fact that you
can ping an IP doesn't mean you can connect to port 80 on the same IP.


Well I disabled the firewall to no obvious effect.


That's my next thought. Do you have a lappie that you could plug into the
router? That should determine what's what.

That's my next step then.
I tried booting off my usb stick to Puppy linux, but this PC is pre-usb-boot.

Just a random thought: is one of the sites you can access the ISP's status
page? Are there known routing problems? Which ISP is it, BTW?


It depends; his ISP was freeserve, then wanadoo and now orange; freeserve.co.uk redirects to orange.co.uk, but fails to load.

That's why I suspect he's maybe been left behind with an old address

Another thing to check: is there a DNS hosts file on the machine itself?
Under XP it's normally in C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
(no extension).

Some malware hijacks your browser by corrupting the hosts file.
Sorry, should have said; that's the first thing I looked at. Standard clean file.

Cool. Grandma-egg-suck mode disengaged.

Well it's as well to cover the "Doh! didn't think of that".
As you can see I'm waving at the fishes here.

You're a good man (or dog, you never can tell on usenet).

I'll try plugging my laptop in next time I'm there (having said that, there's another PC on the local net similarly discombobulated), I'm all for blaming the ISP. (but I would say that!).

P.S I highly commend Codrington's Winter Royal (5.8%)
.

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