Weird browsing problem...

[Appleby]

Sorry for the lame title but I'm not sure what else to call it. Here is the deal....

Business customer has a custom built pc, several years old, running XP and works great. I was in the office for a new pc install and they asked me to take a look at a problem on this custom built pc that started today.

Friday the computer worked fine browsing the net using a Belkin USB wireless adapter. Over the weekend the electricity went out and they came in Monday to a dead ATT 2Wire DSL modem/router combo. They bought a Netgear modem/router combo and installed it. All computers in the office are working 100%. This particular pc gets online fine except it cannot load Yahoo.com. Not in IE or Firefox. It can load Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Autos etc, but not Yahoo.com. I cleared IE and FF cache, cookies, history etc to no avail. I can ping Yahoo.com and it resolves the IP and I get 4 fast replies. If I enter the IP in the address bar I still can't browse to Yahoo.com. So in my mind, this isn't a DNS issue..... I disabled the MS firewall and free AVG, nothing. Safe Mode, same problem. Again, every other computer in the office can browse their just fine and they are all using wireless adapters also. They said the Netgear modem/router is a fresh out of box setup, so there are no IP restrictions on that particular pc. I even manually assigned a different IP to the pc via Windows and still no Yahoo.com.

They said it wasn't a huge deal but we were both pretty much at a loss of what could be causing this.

Any thoughts? What did I over look here?

 

[hyfidel]

1) Double-check that the PC isn't configured to use OpenDNS or another custom DNS server that is blocking Yahoo. If it is, it'll block yahoo.com and the IP for yahoo.com.
2) Check the hosts file.
3) Try an ipconfig /flushdns as well.
4) Compare traceroutes from the affected PC to others in the office.
5) Malware scan?

 

[Deleted member 13571]

Can you try just going to yahoo.com's IP address? does that work? THat would isolate it as a DNS resolution issue.

 

[Appleby]

Update:

Customer called and said that while he can browse to Yahoo Mail login, once he logs in, it will not successfully load the Yahoo Mail messages. He tried Hotmail...same problem. He says he can see the log in page but can't actually load the email message page. Weird??

Hyfidel,

1) It shouldn't be...but where would I look to confirm that OpenDNS or the like isn't restricting the pc?
2) Host file is the default with no custom settings.
3) ipconfig /flushdns attempted, no luck
4)Traceroute....good idea, I'll try that
5) Ran a quick Malwarebytes scan and it came back clean.

Coal, yep tried using the IP to directly browse to the site with no luck. However, as I stated, I can ping Yahoo.com in a command prompt and it resolves the URL to an IP and pings successfully.

 

[Vicenarian]

ipconfig /all

should give you the DNS servers I think.

 

[Appleby]

I thought so too but I didn't see them there? I was thinking that is where I could find them too. When I go back onsite, I'll check again. Thanks

EDIT

I think I missed it...I just checked on my laptop and it's listed as 192.168.0.1, so I probably skimmed past it on the customers pc. I'll double check when I'm on location again.

 

[rusty.nells]

Have you checked the date and time? Could it be an issue with "invalid" security certs?

 

[Appleby]

Wow...very good point! I haven't checked the date and time. Thanks! That's one of those things that I've seen cause some bizarre problems and it's not something I even think to check.

 

[hyfidel]

I forgot to mention LSP-fix, might want to give it a shot.

 

[tech0007]

Appleby what about reinstalling IE again it may be corrupted some how. some versions of ie had issues like IE 7. or try fiddlertool or User Agent String Utility Tool .Active x controls(Use Manage Add-Ons to check all installed add-ons. You may find that the one you need has been disabled.)

if ie 7 try the ie7easyremovaltool. sounds like a corrupted install or customer may have installed something and maybe corrupted some thing.could even be power failure when on machine and corrupted something(spewing data across drive when power or blah blah happened).


tech0007

 

[B Trevathan]

Have you tried loading the site with the browsers addons/extensions turned off?

For IE Start > Run > iexplore -extoff
For FF Start > Run > firefox -safe-mode
​

Have you checked in IE to see if the site has somehow been added to the restricted sites list? I know you said the site will not load in FF too.
Also I would add it to the trusted sites list in IE.


Can you load the site from a proxy site, like kproxy.com etc.


192.168.0.1 should be your router. The two DNS addresses will be close to the bottom of the information when you run ipconfig /all
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6c/Ipconfig_win_xp.png


This info may also help you:

Microsoft

ipconfig /displaydns : Displays the contents of the DNS client resolver cache, which includes both entries preloaded from the local Hosts file and any recently obtained resource records for name queries resolved by the computer. The DNS Client service uses this information to resolve frequently queried names quickly, before querying its configured DNS servers.

ipconfig /registerdns : Initiates manual dynamic registration for the DNS names and IP addresses that are configured at a computer. You can use this parameter to troubleshoot a failed DNS name registration or resolve a dynamic update problem between a client and the DNS server without rebooting the client computer. The DNS settings in the advanced properties of the TCP/IP protocol determine which names are registered in DNS.​

 

[dbdawn]

What about creating a new account on the computer and checking out the web from the new account. I have seen where the network connection, web browser/s get messed up per user.

 

[Appleby]

Update:
Date and time are correct. Great idea, but that wasn't the problem.

Thanks for the help guys, I'll give some of these suggestions a try when I go back onsite. The business is about 20-30 minutes from me, so I've been holding off on going back out until I think I've got the answer or at least alot of things to try.

Dbdawn that is an excellent idea! I'll create a new user account and see what happens.