Internet Connectivity Problem

[DeadheadDuke]

cbritman@cox.net

For the last day or so I have noticed an Internet connectivity problem with some websites.

I first noticed the problem when I tried to sign up for a paid subscription at www.wunderground.com. I had no problems until I got to the point where I was being redirected to their secure page to enter my credit card info. I was using Firefox at the time and the connection attempt timed out. I then went to IE 6 (totally up to date) and tried the same connect routine. IE failed to connect with a "page cannot be displayed" message.

I started trying to troubleshoot the problem but when I tried to connect to support.microsoft.com I could not. I have since found that I can't connect to a several pages at Microsoft including www.microsoft.com.

I tried pinging all the same addresses and that failed. The problem surely smells like a malware problem so I ran all my antispyware applications (Microsoft, Spybot, Prevx, Adaware) and found nothing. I ran Hijackthis and didn't find anything I couldn't account for in the report. I did a total system AV scan and didn't find anything. I removed all temporary files on my system and defragmented the drives. Then I flushed the DNS and ARP caches. Finally I removed and reinstalled TCP/IP. None of these actions have found or fixed the problem. Oh yes, I have no entries in my hosts file.

I can go to another computer on my small network and access the same websites; that suggests to me that the problem is not with the router or DNS servers. I also have the same failure using either IE or Firefox on the problem computer which says it isn't in the browser.

When it comes to networking I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so if anyone could suggest a solution to my problem I will be eternally grateful.

TIA

Cecil Britton

[berrick]

It is possible that you could have DNS issues that effect certian computers only an easy quick way to rule DNS out is to use another DNS server in the tcp/ip settings (use the dns of your isp or router if it supports it) or another way modify the hosts file on the computer in question with the url and ip of the site(s) your have problem with and see if that works.