Hi, I have a home network consisting of 4 pcs and 2 laptops, on a mixture of wired and wireless connections, and I have a problem with one PC. The PC in question can connect on either wired or wireless, and the problem occurs on either. No matter what I try I can't access certain websites from this PC, and the sites affected seem to be completely random:

www.facebook.com, www.nhs.uk, & the UK inland revenue site are the main ones affected so far.

None of these sites are secure, or have any particularly distinguishing features, but the pc seems unable to contact any of them. I've tried pinging both facebook and the nhs site, and get no response. The most frustrating thing is that I can be surfing one of these sites on another pc as the ping is failing on this one!

I'm convinced it's a networking issue for a number of reasons:
Both firefox and IE work fine the rest of the time.
The ping is failing (which although it isn't conclusive in any way, it does support the rest of the evidence).
The LAN light for that pc and the ADSL light on the router are both static when this is the only machine turned on and I try to access one of the offending sites.
When I used IPCONFIG to flush the DNS cache I was able to access facebook ONCE ONLY (and very slowly at that) before the problem returned.

As I said before, this is the same whichever method I use to connect to the network, I've even tried both at once. I've also just checked the host file and found nothing out of the ordinary. The computer has been checked for malware recently and is being checked again as I type. The entire network recieves DHCP from the router (no servers or static IPs here!), and I've removed this pc from all port forwarding and static routing tables to no avail.

This problem seems to follow on from an intermittent E-mail issue I had a few months ago as I discovered it at about the same time thunderbird started sending and recieving e-mails reliably again (and I still have no idea what happened to thunderbird back then)

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm tearing my hair out here!

Thanks, James

when the ping fails, does it say can not be reached or no reply ?

when i originally posted it was no reply, now however it's escalated, I can't access the 'net at all from that machine, and I can't even ping www.google.com, the message I get now is "ping request could not find X. please check the name and try again."

the malware scans came back nearly clean, only 3 minor spyware found. even spybot came back clean.

I'm going to try a windows repair, in the hope that it's a corrupted file or a registry entry that will be reset by the repair, and I'll run a check disk from the xp disk first, but any other ideas are still appreciated, however daft they may possibly seem. I'm at a dead end here and I'm in need of inspiration! Even if someone can just talk through my issue asking questions it's likely to help, I'm getting more than a little bit desperate

James

Ok, a small update. Having tried a checkdisk (which didn't find anything wrong) and a windows repair the situation is still the same: I can't access anything either on the web or the network, and the light on the router isn't flashing when I try. I've been over all the settings again and they should be fine as they are. This is still screaming to me that it's a networking issue within the software somewhere, but at the moment my only answer is a complete re-install which I've been trying to avoid because the machine has a lot of business information on it which I don't like messing around with.

I've also just realised that as a result of the repair the pc is now running only SP1 rather than SP2, so a large number of files have been changed, and the issue remains.

James

Hi James,

It is normal that, after a repair-install (local upgrade) of Windows, you have to reload the latest service pack and updates. Windows does not deals very well with dynamic IPs, my network uses only static IPs with a gateway port. This avoid conflicts.

You may try to start the gateway system and this (which is not connecting) to see if it helps. I'd also try to wipe out the lan connection on it and recreate it from scrap.

Make sure your TCP/IP settings are correct and that all MS clients are installed. Sounds a bit dummy, but I've solved some lan issues just by doing this (Bill Gates' behaviors).

Also, ensure your NIC card is properly configured and working.

Let us know how it goes.

Chris

Hi Dear All

i am trying to connect Outlook Express with my Gmail Account. I have configured the mail settings using POP the incoming is POP.GMAIL.COM & the outgoing server is SMTP.GMAIL.COM. Ports for these servers are 465 & 995 but when i try to connect following error comes....

The host 'pop.gmail.com' could not be found. Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly. Account: 'pop.gmail.com', Server: 'pop.gmail.com', Protocol: POP3, Port: 995, Secure(SSL): Yes, Socket Error: 11001, Error Number: 0x800CCC0D

i am using a internet from LAN and dont know how to solve this problem. please help in this regard.




Adnan

ok here goes....


try looking at your host file and see if those sites are set to 127.0.0.1

if they are remove the entry completely That should fix it