can't get to some sites

[Guest]

I have IE 6 with SP2 on Win XP. i can't get to mapquest, and a few other
sites - most are hotlinks in emails. I never had a problem until 2 weeks ago.
I ran my virus scan sw, adware, and spybot to check stuff out and there was
no problem. I've rebooted and reset some of my IE defaults.

Suggestions on why certain sites won't work now? What if I reload ie 6?

 

[Maurice N ~ MVP]

No, please don't jump to reload IE6.

First, bring up your IE6 browser, manually type in mapquest website, tap enter, see if browser gets there. Post back with progress.

 

[Guest]

I just tried again to enter www.mapquest.com from the address bar, and it
didn't work. I've tried to enter the various URLs that have given me a
problem, and all stop with the dreaded "The page cannot be displayed" screen.
Thinking back, the only application change I've made is I loaded Google
Earth beta a couple of weeks ago. Here's some info from their release notes:
Google Earth (v3.0) Release Notes - November, 2005 (v3.0.07xx) It has also
been tested successfully with Windows XP Service Pack 2
(SP2) with this exception:

* If you install Windows XP SP2, it may DOWNgrade your driver to
a version earlier than is found on the manufacturer's website. Some
people report that such nVidia, Intel, and ATI drivers do not work
with Google Earth. To avoid this problem, please do the following _after_
installing XP SP2: Go to the manufacturer's website, download, and
install the latest driver. Note: Refer to the driver *version number*
-- not the date -- to determine how up-to-date your driver is.

I installed SP2
Sorry for the long post, but this is the only thing I've added, and I try to
avoid any sites that 'do damage'. Mikeplus4

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE]

Check C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc for a file named HOSTS with no
extension. (Not Hosts.sam)
Make sure Windows is set to show hidden files and folders and is NOT set to
hide extensions for known file types.
If HOSTS exists, rename it to HOSTS.OLD
Reboot an try again.

Or, In a Cmd window, enter
ipconfig /flushdns
then clear your TIF also, and re-boot.

 

[Guest]

I found the HOSTS file and renamed it to HOSTS.OLD. I rebooted and still
can't get to mapquest. I typed it into the address bar, and also tried
another URL that I can't get to - both gave me the 'page cannot be found'
error.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE]

Did you try this suggestion?

In a Cmd window, enter
ipconfig /flushdns
then clear your TIF also, and re-boot.

 

[Guest]

Frank,

I just entered the command you wrote below and rebooted. Still can't get to
the URLs I mentioned earlier. FYI, I tried to get to www.wtt.com today (my
wife loves tennis) and it gave me the same error "page cannot be found". How
about deleting my cookies?

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE]

Frank,

I just entered the command you wrote below and rebooted. Still can't get
to
the URLs I mentioned earlier. FYI, I tried to get to www.wtt.com today
(my
wife loves tennis) and it gave me the same error "page cannot be found".
How
about deleting my cookies?

I don't know. If you have other cookies you want to save you could delete
just the cookies for the problem sites.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

(cross-post added to XP Networking)

Frank,

I just entered the command you wrote below and rebooted. Still can't get to
the URLs I mentioned earlier. FYI, I tried to get to www.wtt.com today (my
wife loves tennis) and it gave me the same error "page cannot be found". How
about deleting my cookies?

Make sure first you don't have a DNS problem with that site.
For example, the first time I tried using nslookup with that name
both my DNS servers timed out. When I retried it was found quickly.
So evidently there was sufficient delay doing the lookup the first time
that nslookup gave up. This suggests the same problem could happen
to iexplore.exe when it has to do the lookup the first time. Then what if
there is insufficient persistence in your DNS server in contrast to mine?
Then you might always see that timeout symptom.

Another surprise for me was that even when I tried ping -n 1 www.wtt.com
and that lookup worked, e.g. as evidenced by the first line of its response:

Pinging www.wwt.com [198.200.139.195] with 32 bytes of data:

when I then immediately tried to check what information the dnscache
was retaining because of that lookup, there was none! E.g.

ipconfig /displaydns

just showed information loaded by the HOSTS file about localhost
(my only entry in that file.)

(FYI often ping -n 1 can be used in these cases to try loading some
of the DNS lookup records into the dnscache so the user's DNS servers
don't have to be reaccessed. nslookup's lookup in contrast is not retained
locally but as I showed you can increase the probability of it being retained
by your DNS servers.)

Hmm... I just tried using nslookup interactively with its set debug command
and then retried the lookup. It shows that the Time-to-live for the record
should be enough for me to see it in my dnscache.

<example>
QUESTIONS:
www.wwt.com, type = A, class = IN
ANSWERS:
-> www.wwt.com
internet address = 198.200.139.195
ttl = 462 (7 mins 42 secs)
</example>


So I don't know what this means. Perhaps there is a clock somewhere
out of whack?

I'm cross-posting these observations to the XP Networking NG
in case someone there has some better explanations for our
combined symptoms with this lookup.


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---