Sluggish or inability to access some sites

[Pterocarpous]

Hello all,

I've run into a particularly perplexing problem on one of the systems I support remotely.

Platform: XP Pro SP2/IE7 ISP: Cox Communications West.

The user is unable to access or is able to access intermitently or very sluggishly some benign web sites including Sign On San Diego and OfficeDepot. This problem is not limited to IE. It occurs w/ Mozilla FF as well. This problem is unique to one workstation on the LAN. There is one more workstation on the P2P LAN running the same OS that does not exhibit these symptoms. The former is hardwired (ethernet cable) to the router. The latter is connected wirelessly to the router.

Here's what I've done thus far:

• Replaced MVPS HOSTS file w/ default HOSTS file (local host 127.0.0.1 as only entry)
  
• Uninstalled Spybot S&D
  
• Uninstalled Spyware Blaster
  
• Disabled NAV autoprotect
  
• Disabled NAV Internet worm protection
  
• Reset IE
  
• Disabled all add-ons in IE
  
• Ran HJT - nothing untoward there
  
• Ran BHO Demon - all BHO's detected r benign (Java, Adobe..)
  
• Toggled DNS Client from Automatic to Disabled then back to Automatic again (reboots and DNS flushes in between)
  
• Rebooted router
  

Thank you in advance to anyone who can enlighten me on this problem.

Edited January 25, 2008 by Pterocarpous

[cluberti]

Well, if you were to gather a network trace from the wired machine trying to visit one of the 'slow" sites, and a network trace from the wireless machine going to the same site, do you see any obvious delays in traffic? Normally this is a DNS issue (make sure both machines have the same DNS servers configured), but to figure it out for certain I would suggest downloading and using wireshark or netmon to gather the network captures and view them.

[Pterocarpous]

Well, if you were to gather a network trace from the wired machine trying to visit one of the 'slow" sites, and a network trace from the wireless machine going to the same site, do you see any obvious delays in traffic? Normally this is a DNS issue (make sure both machines have the same DNS servers configured), but to figure it out for certain I would suggest downloading and using wireshark or netmon to gather the network captures and view them.

Holy Toledo!! Thank you cluberti! I don' know why the hec I didn' think of that! The TCPIP configuration on the 2nd workstation (that does not exhibit the problem) is all dynamic. This WS is a laptop that the user travels w/ frequently. I couldn't assign a static IP for the laptop w/o the user always having to change it. The router doesn't have MAC address reservation capability but I needed a consistent IP for port forwarding to both computers. So, I'd assigned a static LAN IP to the desktop and allowed 1 DHCP address on the router. This gave me the predictable IP for the laptop that I needed for port forwarding.

The laptop, w/ it's dynamic TCPIP configuration, showed the ISP's 3 DNS servers in ipconfig /all.

The desktop PC's TCPIP config DNS had been set w/ the LAN IP for the router.

I checked the router for the ISP's current DNS servers. Entered them into the TCPIP config for the desktop PC.

Voila! Worky worky.

Thank you very much. I am still going to check out those utilities for my own edification, btw, but need to quickly get everything re-enabled in time b4 the user comes back from his lunch mtg.

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A fortunate "side effect" of making the DNS change (could be coincidence but I know it didn't work this morning when I tried it): I have ATI (Acronis True Image) scheduled tasks set up to email a report to me after every scheduled ATI task has ran on the desktop PC.

Previously, I was unable to get the email configuration to work in ATI through the ISP's SMTP server. I ended up using an alternate SMTP port on my own domain. While it would pass the "test" w/in ATI's notification options, I'd never get the email. Now, still using my alternate SMTP port, it passes the email notification test AND I get the email. Who'd've thunk it! Tonight I'll try setting it up w/ the provider's SMTP server and see if that works.

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I'm a happy camper. Thank you again.

Edited January 25, 2008 by Pterocarpous