REALLY Weird Browsing Issue

[Valek]

Okay everyone, as my Subject says I'm having a really WEIRD browsing issue here. Let me provide details. I have 2 computers at home, both using Road Runner Broadband, through a hub (paying Time Warner for two IP addresses until I can afford a router/switch). Both computers are running Windows XP Pro.

On my computer I can surf to a particular website, (in this case it is Digitalart.org), all day long. Yet my wife, on her computer 8 feet away cannot get the page to load. It keeps coming up with the Page Cannot be Displayed error. Yet I can bring it right up. She can connect to other web pages with no problem. From her computer I can ping other sites using name resolution like yahoo.com or excite.com and I can ping them using IP addresses.

Now here's the latest issue just from three minutes ago...I used NeoTrace to try to determine their IP address so I could attempt to ping it from my wife's computer to see if it might be a DNS issue, and now NeoTrace is telling me that the name could not be resolved...so when I open my browser to navigate to the page I now get the message that it can't be displayed, when I just brought it up 5 minutes ago.

Am I missing something simple here? Is this a DNS issue with RR's DNS server or what? I hate to sound stupid and even worse to feel stupid, but I've never seen this particular situation before.

 

[egghead]

its possible it was displayed from your internet cache

how often do you delete your temporary folder and your cookies?

at least once a day?

digitalart works for me here

someone might be able to help


egghead

 

[2z]

this might help

repair IE6 in XP
Start / Run / * regsvr32 urlmon.dll *

 

[Valek]

Well, I did delete TIF's and Cookies and even ran the Start / Run / * regsvr32 urlmon.dll * to no avail. Page still cannot be displayed. I am totally perplexed.

 

[Perris Calderon]

no, that's not the point...we're saying you probably were not bringing the page up, you were bringing the cache file up.

goggle search the site, bring it up in cache pages, and try to find information you need from that

 

[Perris Calderon]

try this too;

windows key+r

paste this in;

%temp%.

go to temp internet files, open that folder

hit control + f, find the site, see if you can work something out off that

 

[Valek]

Well Dealer, I understand that the page was cached in the Temporary Internet Files, however, I stopped being able to retrieve the page Before I cleared out the Temporary Internet Files, so I think that invalidates the argument that it was being displayed from a cache. Also did the Google Search on the Site prior to your post and could not connect to it from either their link or cached images. There would not be anything in the Temporary Internet Files for the Site since I haven't been able to go there.

This is Strange, very strange.

 

[Perris Calderon]

no valek, windows can play practical jokes on you.(true)

once in a while, a file will become corrupted, or just removed from the temp folder, or windows will say...hey...let's really put a fujinx on this charachter valek, and really piss him off.

then the os will tell all other apps on your box to point at you trying and laugh, whilst you try to figure this problem out.

all the apps will laugh, and then microsoft will contact this site, and tell us to look for a post from "valek".

they tell us to have a much fun as possible, before we figure out your problem.

sometimes we just fix it for ya, but other times, we just keep running you around till windows has had enough, and decides to work it out for you, making you think it was something you personally did to fix it.

this is what we get for using an os that we nicked off of one of those area 54 spacecraft.

try to get the site on a google search, and bring it up from the cached pages

 

[2z]

Posted by dealer
this is what we get for using an os that we nicked off of one of those area 54 spacecraft.

Dammit dealer that was supposed to be a secret

 

[gonaads]

Dealer,
You in a heep o' trouble boy! Scarin the kids like that.

Valek's gonna have nightmares of MicroSquish for ever. Think of all the Shrink/Psychiatrist bills and all the medication he's go... gonna..... Hmmmm... The meds would be a good thing.

 

[B~B]

You mean the aliens are in our computers ?!?

That would explain everything. Almost.

 

[GhaLeoN]

this isnt funny

The exact same thing is happening to me, only with this webpage

http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/psychology/psych.html

I have 4 comps on my network, and my XP box is the only one that will not load this page.

I've tried that IE6 repair thing, cleaned out all my cookies and cached web pages, and tried the google cached pages idea....... all of these did not work.

Plz help, this is so annoying b/c I need this page for school stuff.

 

[bruce_ers00]

I had this problem with WinXP shortly after installing the new OS but with www.metacrawler.com. I solved the problem by doing a format.

Everyone on my network could access this site but me. Strange.

 

[GhaLeoN]

formatting isnt an option

 

[koko]

why isn't that an option?

formatting, although scary to the novice, is an excellent way to get a 'puter up and running the way it should.

 

[Valek]

Problem Solved

Well, here's what I have managed to find out after doing some digging. Windows 2000/XP has built-in DNS caching (Different from the Temporary Internet Files and cookies obviously), which basically caches resolved hostnames for faster access and reduced DNS lookups. This is generally a great feature, with the only downside being that FAILED DNS lookups get cached by default as well. When a DNS lookup fails (due to temporary DNS problems), Windows still caches the unsuccessful DNS query, and in turn fails to connect to a host regardless of the fact that the DNS server might be able to handle your lookup seconds later. That's what was happening here.

I found out that there are a couple of different ways to tweak Windows 2k/XP not to cache failed DNS lookups:

1. You can flush the DNS cache manually, by going to the Command Prompt and typing: ipconfig /flushdns or

2. You can wait for the cached lookup to expire or reboot the system...

Or you can permanently solve this issue by tweaking a few Registry entries.


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters]
"NetFailureCacheTime"=dword:00000000
"NegativeSOACacheTime"=dword:00000000
"NegativeCacheTime"=dword:00000000


I flushed the DNS cache manually on both computers and instantly the site popped up on both mine and my wife's computer. Then I made the above registry modifications to prevent this from happening in the future.

Egghead, I don't know if this is what you were referring to or not, but if it is then I'm sorry I didn't gather that from your post. And gonnads I've always said "A better life through chemicals!" Hope this helps others (the post and the chemicals)

Val

 

[Valek]

And Here's the Reg file...

If you don't want to manually make the changes to your registry. As always there's the warning to backup your registry before making any changes.

 

[GhaLeoN]

Posted by koko
why isn't that an option?

formatting, although scary to the novice, is an excellent way to get a 'puter up and running the way it should.

i dont have time man

I'd much rather do the work that needs to be done on my thesis and classes than spend time formatting, then reinstalling XP and my programs

 

[GhaLeoN]

hey valek:

ive tried the registry file you posted and manually flushing the DNS cache

I still can not see the website : http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/Psychology

what is going on here? I can still see this page on my other computers