Ghost in the machine - 4

[SafeHex]

For a couple of days now, I cannot access www.drudgereport.com on one PC
with either IE 6 or Firefox.

In IE 6:

First (at the bottom);
"Website found. Waiting for reply....)

Then:
"The page cannot be displayed"

In Firefox:

"The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading."

I have no problems with any other site at all. Or, even with this site on
the couple of other machines I use here. This mahine has a broadband
wireless Internet modem and has no blocking software set to prevent access
to www.drudgereport.com. PC has been checked for malware and viruses but
came up clean.

At first, I thought the site was having problems till I found that only this
machine had this peculiar problem. The site has no problems, AFAIK.

Any insight would be much appreciated.

SafeHex
------------

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE]

For a couple of days now, I cannot access www.drudgereport.com on one PC
with either IE 6 or Firefox.

In IE 6:

First (at the bottom);
"Website found. Waiting for reply....)

Then:
"The page cannot be displayed"

In Firefox:

"The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading."

I have no problems with any other site at all. Or, even with this site on
the couple of other machines I use here. This mahine has a broadband
wireless Internet modem and has no blocking software set to prevent access
to www.drudgereport.com. PC has been checked for malware and viruses but
came up clean.

At first, I thought the site was having problems till I found that only
this machine had this peculiar problem. The site has no problems, AFAIK.

Any insight would be much appreciated.

Check for a file named HOSTS with no extension (not Hosts.sam). It may be a
hidden file. Open it with Notepad and remove any line referencing the site.
Or, rename HOSTS to OLDHOSTS

 

[Jack \(MVP-Networking\).]

Hi
I can not connect to www.drudgereport.com either, might be that some thing
is wrong with the site.
Jack (MVP-Networking).

 

[Charlie Tame]

Same Here Jack, maybe that's the answer...

Charlie

Hi
I can not connect to www.drudgereport.com either, might be that some thing
is wrong with the site.
Jack (MVP-Networking).

 

[SafeHex]

Thanks for the responses.

Frank Saunders, thanks for the suggestion but I found that I have only the
MS sample hosts and lmhosts files on this one machine. Also "LMHOST look up"
is disabled in network preferences - I don't really know if this has any
relevance. Nevertheless I renamed both but this did not resolve the
situation.

From the responses of Jack and Charlie, I think the possible explanation is
that the server at their site is taking too long to respond and the
connection is timing out or something at this end. I found that the two
other machines can still connect to that site, though it is now about 4 out
of 5 times or so only!

I don't really understand what is happenning, but now I discovered that more
of my bookmarked sites are timing out on all three machines, more so on this
one that could not connect to Drudge Report. And I have a ton of bookmarks -
I just opened several at random (not all at once though!).

Maybe it is that there is something going on with my ISP or the Net itself,
which is rather frightening to imagine.

Regards and thanks.

SafeHex

 

[bubtoob.20.ozzzzy]

snip

Had the same problem for several days, fixed it today by deleting
cookies. Hope this helps!

 

[SafeHex]

Had the same problem for several days, fixed it today by deleting
cookies. Hope this helps!

Thanks for the tip. Actually, tests were already made with both browsers (IE
& Firefox) emptied of their cookies, histories, saved sessions, passwords
and cache memories.......... But to no avail.

This now has got me very intrigued - because right now all three PCs can
access all and any websites except for Drudge Report on this one machine
only!

A tech friend has volunteered to stop by after work tommorow - I will post
findings.

Regards.

SafeHex
------------

 

[bubtoob.20.ozzzzy]

I apparently spoke too soon anyway, it worked for a while, then stopped
again, then worked again later. Read elsewhere the problem lies with
the Drudge server.

 

[SafeHex]

Read elsewhere the problem lies with
the Drudge server.


Thanks for the update. Yes, I did arrive at that conclusion too. The weird
thing is that two of my PCs (one running Vista Beta, the other WinXP 64Bit)
can connect to DrudgeReport 4 times out of 5 with no problems! I wonder
which particular settings or combinations can achieve this - everything
looks the same at first check!

Just by way of interest, where did you read about the Drudge server?

Regards.

SafeHex
------------

 

[bubtoob.20.ozzzzy]

snip

Just by way of interest, where did you read about the Drudge server?

Regards.

SafeHex
------------

Another newsgroup (therefore, it must be true, right?) lol. Sorry,
don't recall which one

 

[bubtoob.20.ozzzzy]

snip

Another newsgroup (therefore, it must be true, right?) lol. Sorry,
don't recall which one

--------------------

To quote a later post from 'another group' :

"It should be better now. It looks like they updated the DNS to exclude
the 6 IPs that were not serving any web pages.

Here's the active IPs:

www.drudgereport.com. 144 IN CNAME drudgereport.com.
drudgereport.com. 144 IN A 38.99.110.52
drudgereport.com. 144 IN A 38.99.110.53
drudgereport.com. 144 IN A 38.99.110.60
drudgereport.com. 144 IN A 38.99.110.61"

http://www.drudgeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=6497&st=15

 

[SafeHex]

Thanks a lot for your very informative response. I need that just to make
sure it was not my machine at fault somewhere. I did a Visual Trace and was
able to get to their server even when both my browsers were timing out!

But, just a few moments ago, I was able to get to the website without
problems on both Firefox and IE. Lets hope it stays that way!

Regards and thanks again.

SafeHex