Extremely odd connection/internet problem

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I am not a proverbial computer freak, but I'm not clueless either. And I really don't understand what's going on.

Background information: DSL connection (provided by Bell sympatico. Three computers use this connection through a router for more than a year, and I never had any problems with that.

On Thursday (sept 28th) night, everything worked perfectly. The next day (sept 29th), a large number of web pages don't load. For example, I can go to google, do a search, but only 1 of 5 pages work.

My homepage loads, but about half of the links don't. To sum it up, there are too many pages that don't load for it to be an individual problem, yet I am definitely connected to the Internet (can play multiplayer games...). Fortunately, SP seems to be in the working 30% of websites.

I thought it might be a browser problem. Tried with IE6, IE7 and Firefox. All have the same problem.

I called my ISP's support yesterday. They checked my line, and said everything was fine. Had me unplug modem and router, then re-plug, but problem wasn't fixed. Told me to ping a website using the command prompt and try to connect to said website using the IP. Some sites can be pinged, others not. They were probably tired of helping me, so they said I might have a virus and try to clean it and call again if there's still a problem. Scanned the 3 computers with Norton 2006 (latest definitions in, or course) and the three computers appear to be clean.

So I'm completely out of ideas now. It's basically as if my connection was half-working. I'll probably call them again and see where it goes, but I'm really not optimistic. If anyone has the slightest idea of what might be going on, please post your ideas.

[ September 30, 2006, 19:45: Message edited by: DarthMuffin ]

 

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan

Try that. But it sounds like a DNS problem.

So, after scanning, call your ISP, and if they're unwilling to help, switch your ISP.

 

Or just change the DNS settings *shrug*

 

Unfortunately, I can't open Taza's link. That's one of the frustrating things; I can't even use the Internet properly to find information about the problem.

I called my ISP again, and they said it *might* be a problem on their side, and that I should wait till monday to see it it's fixed and call them again if there's still a problem. I hate them.

How does one change the DNS settings?

 

Hmm, now that I reread your first post, I don't think the DNS servers are the problem at all. If you could ping the websites by their IP but not by their hostname, *then* it is probably a DNS problem; but seeing that you can do neither I can only conclude that the source of the problem lies elsewhere.

First of all, what did you do exactly when you unplugged the router? Did you actually do a cold reboot on both (remove the power) or just unplugged the datacables?
Most of my Internet problems are gone with a simple router reboot.

If that doesn't help, then the best thing you can do now is to see where the communication dies. The first step in doing this is to check whether the packets are actually leaving your computer. As I've already said in another thread, download and use Ethereal to see what your system is sending when you ping an IP and whether you get anything back.

Try to download Ethereal from these locations, if you need others, just ask because I have a ton of urls which link to this file.
Link 1
Link 2

 

For the router, I simply unplugged the router, like the "technician" told me to do. It didn't help.

As for the links, neither of them work. At this point, I'm really not sure if providing others would work. Apart from a few websites, it looks like I can only access pages through google's cache. That's what I really hate about this; it's jut not logic (to me anyway) that I can visit a few sites (and even post on forums) but the rest is all messed up.

Out of desperation, I actually read the whole "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" message. One of the links direct to Window's XP "Network Diagnostics" tool. After running it, it says:

"Windows did not detect any problems with your Internet connection over HTTP and HTTPS, but was not able to make a successful connection over FPT. The most likely cause of this problem is that a firewall client running on your machine is blocking the necessary FTP ports"

Don't know if this is actually important, but I would have guessed so. Therefore, for testing purposes, I deactivated Norton's and Window's firewalls. Nothing changed.

I'll continue to try out stuff, but I can only hope that the problem does come from my ISP and that they will have it fixed.

By the way, thanks Morgoth (and Taza) for actually taking the time to reply. The help is really appreciated.

EDIT: As of now (October 1st) everything seems to work again. I guess it was really their fault after all. Once again, thanks to Morgoth and Taza for the help.

[ October 01, 2006, 18:02: Message edited by: DarthMuffin ]