I need some expert advise...

delanvital · February 14, 2007, 10:25:44 PM

A good friend of mine is having a rather peculiar problem. He can browse the net, except for a few sites, one of them being a very reliable site, the danish railway's main site, which works perfectly for everybody else on other computers. So we do know that the problem is that his computer, regardless of internet connection cannot connect to these sites. The pages respond with timeout in the browser. He can ping them without any problems. The PC has the problem even when connected to a different ISP.

First I did a router check when I was there. Everything was fine. I did a general DNS-check (checking the hosts-file for changes, manually putting the ip of the railway site in the browser which did not work etc). I had him then do a HijackThis! report which was fine as well. He then did a virus scan with various programs which turned out fine as well. He installed firefox to see if it was an IE problem. It was not. We then did some other tests which I am too tired to remember :blush:

It is only a few sites. They time out from the browser. Any ideas?

PS. There are some browsing problems in general now, some pages need to be refreshed more than once to work, but I am sure that is with his brand-new line and a rather unknown ISP. The last place he used the PC, in the same config, there was only the problem with these few sites.

EDIT: Oh yeah, we tried to do a fresh Java-installation, checking for flashplayer problems and so on.

BigFatCat · February 14, 2007, 10:36:45 PM

Try flushing your dns cache, IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS. Check you've got a valid DNS server configured on the PC or router.

delanvital · February 14, 2007, 11:03:34 PM

Quote from: BigFatCat;177341Try flushing your dns cache, IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS. Check you've got a valid DNS server configured on the PC or router.

I had him do that, but to no avail. However, by entering the ip of the site directly in the browser he should bypass the DNS-server and since that does not work either I do believe the problem is caused by something else. But I am kinda lost here...

Also - we have solved the refresh problem, so only this problem with a few sites.

Can it be browser-related somehow, or something that is underlying to browsers in general?

Anonymous · February 14, 2007, 11:29:43 PM

Look for any funny routing by typing:

route print

in a CMD window. A route print for me gives:

QuoteC:\>route print
===========================================================================
Interface List
0x1 ........................... MS TCP Loopback interface
0x2 ...00 16 e6 5b 86 de ...... Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet
troller - Packet Scheduler Miniport
===========================================================================
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.5 10
127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 1
192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.5 192.168.1.5 10
192.168.1.5 255.255.255.255 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 10
192.168.1.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.5 192.168.1.5 10
224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 192.168.1.5 192.168.1.5 10
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.5 192.168.1.5 1
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1
===========================================================================
Persistent Routes:
None

C:\>

just copy the output here if you're not up to speed on inspecting the results and we'll check it out for you.

suicidal_monkey · February 15, 2007, 08:07:34 AM

no chance it's a timeout setting that's been set too low? Otherwise BB's posts looks suitably technical to do something useful - would trying to perform a tracert to these sites (particularly the intermittent ones) help?

Does the problem occur at his house - could it be an underlying network issue in the area where he lives - has the pc been tested while on the same network as one that works - perhaps take a laptop round with a flushed DNS etc and see if it can connect through his router/modem?

delanvital · February 15, 2007, 07:46:06 PM

Quote from: BlueBall;177352Look for any funny routing by typing:

route print

in a CMD window. A route print for me gives:

just copy the output here if you're not up to speed on inspecting the results and we'll check it out for you.

The result is identical to yours BB :sad:

delanvital · February 15, 2007, 07:47:10 PM

Quote from: suicidal_monkey;177371Does the problem occur at his house - could it be an underlying network issue in the area where he lives - has the pc been tested while on the same network as one that works - perhaps take a laptop round with a flushed DNS etc and see if it can connect through his router/modem?

No other PC has been tested on the network, although we are working on it. However, the PC did the same at his old place (completely different area and another ISP)

Anonymous · February 15, 2007, 08:00:38 PM

quote=delanvital;177447]The result is identical to yours BB :sad:[/quote]

Thats good. it means your routing hasnt been hijacked. Now, can you check the contents of some files:

Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\

and open hosts in notepad.

Here is my hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost

The file will prob contain lots of other lines all starting with # which basically means those lines are remarked out and don't do anything.

Can you check to see what is in the hosts file?

delanvital · February 15, 2007, 08:06:30 PM

Quote from: BlueBall;177454Can you check to see what is in the hosts file?

See top post - I've already been there

Anonymous · February 15, 2007, 08:18:33 PM

Quote from: delanvital;177456See top post - I've already been there

That was quick :blush:

My next step if it was mine would be to try a different network card.

delanvital · February 15, 2007, 08:27:26 PM

He did a couple of tracerts and now this is getting weird, or interesting, depending on how you see it. He did two trace routes. First this one:
----
Microsoft Windows XP [version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.NUITARI> tracert www.elitedaters.com

Sporer rute til www.elitedaters.com [81.19.228.34]
over et maksimum af 30 hop:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms 1.16.185.213.dk-bot.res.dyn.perspektivbredband.n
et [213.185.16.1]
3 26 ms 27 ms 26 ms kbhn-cdix-pr0-gi0-1-509.perspektivbredband.net [
213.185.31.194]
4 27 ms 26 ms 27 ms jay.net.dix.dk [192.38.7.66]
5 28 ms 29 ms 27 ms 81.7.154.9
6 29 ms 30 ms 29 ms web1.elitedaters.com [81.19.228.34]

Sporing fuldfÃ¸rt.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.NUITARI>

Note, that this site does still not work in the browser! The interesting find on that listing is jay.net.dix.dk - it is part of the network at the technical university where he used to live and route his data through. Could there be some remnants from that setup somewhere? I do not know if that site worked from the university network.

---
The other site - the railway one - times out. And please note, that this PC times out on this site from more than one ISP and location (!) The attempt at trace route is here:

Microsoft Windows XP [version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.NUITARI>tracert www.dsb.dk

Sporer rute til www.dsb.dk [193.28.147.158]
over et maksimum af 30 hop:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms 1.16.185.213.dk-bot.res.dyn.perspektivbredband.n
et [213.185.16.1]
3 26 ms 27 ms 26 ms kbhn-cdix-pr0-gi0-0-509.perspektivbredband.net [
213.185.31.54]
4 27 ms 27 ms 27 ms 192.38.7.43
5 28 ms 28 ms 27 ms 192.38.7.80
6 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms g0-1-50-ar5.CPH.router.colt.net [80.80.0.170]
7 33 ms 30 ms 31 ms 80.80.2.22
8 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
9 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
10 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
11 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
12 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
13 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
14 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
15 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
16 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
17 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
18 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
19 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
20 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
21 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
22 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
23 * * * Anmodning fik timeout.
etc.

This could also be due to some bad routing, i.e. the same problem as the frist tracert. Any clever thoughts? :blink:

GhostMjr · February 15, 2007, 08:28:43 PM

Has he got any proxies running in the browsers?

Anonymous · February 15, 2007, 08:33:12 PM

Check Tools // Internet Options // Connections in MSIE and see if there are any old connections in there.

Additionally, click on LAN settings and see if a proxy has been specified.

delanvital · February 15, 2007, 08:42:50 PM

Quote from: GhostMjr;177460Has he got any proxies running in the browsers?

When he was at the uni he did use some proxies. But he says everything is gone now. It seems to be correct I guess, since "just about" every single page on the internet works...

Quote from: BlueBall;177462Check Tools // Internet Options // Connections in MSIE and see if there are any old connections in there.

Additionally, click on LAN settings and see if a proxy has been specified.

There are no dial-up or vpn settings. The "never dial" etc is greyed out.

Lan settings: checked in automatic registration of settings but that is it. No other settings or specifications. Seems like standard.

Can I reset his network routing somehow? Say, if I had him reinstall his network-adapter? And if that adapter is built-in I cannot move it to another slot, and force a fresh reinstall wrt drivers. Just speculating here...

Anonymous · February 15, 2007, 08:48:27 PM

Quote from: delanvital;177463When he was at the uni he did use some proxies. But he says everything is gone now. It seems to be correct I guess, since "just about" every single page on the internet works...

There are no dial-up or vpn settings. The "never dial" etc is greyed out.

Lan settings: checked in automatic registration of settings but that is it. No other settings or specifications. Seems like standard.

Can I reset his network routing somehow? Say, if I had him reinstall his network-adapter? And if that adapter is built-in I cannot move it to another slot, and force a fresh reinstall wrt drivers. Just speculating here...

You could try uninstalling the NIC from device manager then rebooting but it may not cure the problem. What "may" be more effective is to go into network properties and check in the "advanced" properties of the TCP/IP protocol to see if anything has been added to DNS/WINS/NetBIOS etc. basically they should all be empty with DHCP providing all necessary info (check that DHCP server has not been hard coded just in case:)

You could also try removing TCP/IP from the protocols bound to the card then reboot and add TCP/IP back in