freewriter101
Beta member
- Messages
- 4
- Location
- USA
Well I'm baffled.
I am the non-certificated guy who helps some of my coworkers out with computer issues for a little spare cash. I don't even charge for problems I can't solve. So I get a call today about a laptop. He states he can't access any websites unless he uses his bookmarks (which I assumed, and verified later, were just cached pages). He is running Win XP SP3. I have him run ipconfig (release and renew, as well as flushing the dns) and I have him run a tracert. Well, he definitely has connectivity. So I ask him to drive his laptop over to me. At my house, no problems. At all. Everything is fine. I run his Norton AV and check the settings and the logs. Looks like they may have had some adware and Norton stopped some penetration attacks--probably just a bot running scripts against random IP addresses but I have no idea for sure. Still, basically everything seems fine. So I decide to drive over to his house and see exactly what is going on for myself.
Can't connect to yahoo, hotmail, amazon, or msn. I was able to connect to google (about half the time) and godaddy. I tried several other web pages as well. Tried pinging the sites I was unable to reach, and DNS was unable to resolve the addresses. Ran through flushing the dns again, successfully traced routes to the web pages I could reach but not the ones I could not reach. Incidentally, he is able to access all of these web pages on other devices in his house, though I have not independently verified that with my own equipment. So I check his router settings--no rules or firewall settings that would block him from specific sites--even if there were it wasn't giving me the right error message anyway. I tried pinging using the router's built in ping. Sure enough, it was able to successfully ping hotmail.
I feel like I am missing something really obvious here. The computer itself doesn't seem to be having any issues, but neither does the network. It's only when they come together that there is a problem. I should mention that he reports that it was after an update that the problem first started. But with none of the router settings preventing the computer from accessing certain web pages, why would it behave this way?
Thanks for any suggestions!
I am the non-certificated guy who helps some of my coworkers out with computer issues for a little spare cash. I don't even charge for problems I can't solve. So I get a call today about a laptop. He states he can't access any websites unless he uses his bookmarks (which I assumed, and verified later, were just cached pages). He is running Win XP SP3. I have him run ipconfig (release and renew, as well as flushing the dns) and I have him run a tracert. Well, he definitely has connectivity. So I ask him to drive his laptop over to me. At my house, no problems. At all. Everything is fine. I run his Norton AV and check the settings and the logs. Looks like they may have had some adware and Norton stopped some penetration attacks--probably just a bot running scripts against random IP addresses but I have no idea for sure. Still, basically everything seems fine. So I decide to drive over to his house and see exactly what is going on for myself.
Can't connect to yahoo, hotmail, amazon, or msn. I was able to connect to google (about half the time) and godaddy. I tried several other web pages as well. Tried pinging the sites I was unable to reach, and DNS was unable to resolve the addresses. Ran through flushing the dns again, successfully traced routes to the web pages I could reach but not the ones I could not reach. Incidentally, he is able to access all of these web pages on other devices in his house, though I have not independently verified that with my own equipment. So I check his router settings--no rules or firewall settings that would block him from specific sites--even if there were it wasn't giving me the right error message anyway. I tried pinging using the router's built in ping. Sure enough, it was able to successfully ping hotmail.
I feel like I am missing something really obvious here. The computer itself doesn't seem to be having any issues, but neither does the network. It's only when they come together that there is a problem. I should mention that he reports that it was after an update that the problem first started. But with none of the router settings preventing the computer from accessing certain web pages, why would it behave this way?
Thanks for any suggestions!