Figment

My PC is left on 24/7 apart from the occasional reboot. This has never been a problem until the last few days when IE has suddenly stopped loading pages after a period of inactivity. If I click on one of my favorites I get the IP address in the status bar in place of the URL, and eventually a page not found error. Reboot and everything works OK again.

Tried changing DNS, deleting Temporary Internet Files and I know it's not the router locking out as another PC can access the net while this one cannot.

Any ideas what else I should check?

little'un

iTrader: (9)

Checked for viruses - assuming you've got software for it?

Figment

Yup, Sophos running and bang up to date

SJ_Skyline

spyware free?

When you get the problem, try launching windows explorer and typing a url in the address bar and see if that works.

martin_oleary

Is DNS resloving your url to an address ok? (nslookup www.scoobynet.co.uk from a command prompt) does it use DHCP to pick up the ip address dns server default gateway etc, and lastly is the ip configuration the same as the working machine? if all the above is ok you could try a command tracert www.scoobynet.co.uk from both machines, and see if the trace goes the same way on both, if that's ok it's likely an issue with your browser is the ip address it shows in the address bar the same for all your favorites? (if so sounds like your browser is being hijacked in some way)

mark_h

I know you're behind a router but do you have a firewall running too? When I used to run NIS2003 I'd occasionally see this exact problem - it happened when the Norton Redirector service locked up and it would block all port 80 traffic. A reboot would fix it, as would stopping/killing all the Norton services and restarting them.

Figment

Thanks for the replies

Have Spy Sweeper guarding against spy/ad/malware. Have also run AdAware and Spybot - all report clean

No firewall apart from that provided by the router hardware / NAT translation.

Mysteriously it's all working OK again today. If it plays up again I'll try the suggestions made.

Thanks

Figment

Problem is back, with a twist.

Open IE session, can move about freely, open new windows (CTRL-N) without problem.

Click on IE icon to open a new session (while this one is running) nothing loads and IP address of the site it is trying to load (217.79.127.30 for Scoobynet) is displayed in the status bar. Meanwhile if I switch back to the already open session, I can use it as normal. Close all IE sessions, open a new one - OK. Open another - nowt.

Just downloaded and installed firefox (full version 1.0 is out tomorrow BTW) and this runs fine, so my "problem" has to be something to do with IE?

what would scooby do

figgy, have you emptied the IE cache (delete all temp cache files) as IE becomes unstable if this isn't done often..

Figment

Yes

but thanks for the suggestion.

what would scooby do

OOF - didn't see that !

little'un

iTrader: (9)

When having probs with IE, when I was in systems - uninstall and reinstall IE with the latest service pack and sometimes into the registry to very very carefully delete applicable files (though I pooed myself on various occasions not really knowing what I was doing - so only attempt if you DO know what to delete) otherwise you could be up a certain river with out a paddle.....

You can at least reinstall and see what happens!

BlkKnight

do you get an error with IE?

I had a similar problem last week where a DLL got corrupted. Just did a search and found an older one & replaced

Figment

No errors, just the IP address in the status bar and page never loads.

danny-boy

mate i've got the same problem with my PC, its a issue in IE 6 which MS havent got a fix for yet.

I've run Spybot and Ad-aware and Spyware blaster, I have Zonealarm running high mode and Norton Corp running and update. I also have all the windows update for XP bar SP2 (which is ****)

I find mine very intermittent. When it happens next time, disconnect from the net and then reconnect and it should go away. I don't know what else to do, but I reckon they'll be a Windows Update soon for it mate

It may also worth checking your registry.

Open regedit and go to

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cur rentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\0

and check if you have an entry called 1004 if you do and its a blue icon then its fine if the icon is the red ish colour delete the key and create a new key called 1004 with a hex value of 3

You have to check all profiles within HKEY_USERS\

What i've described above is the removal tech for DSO Exploit which is a mother fluffer of the spy program which sometimes spybot doesnt detect.


Disclaimer:
This is only a recommendation and dont blame me if you **** up your PC. Best practice would be to back up your registry before hacking.

Hope this helps


Dan

BlkKnight

you haven't got IE configuerd to go through a proxy have you?

Figment

No

danny-boy

Mate sorted mine I used a tool called Spyware Doctor had 16 infections. Spybot Search and Destory and Ad-Aware SE didnt pick up any of them. You need the full program to remove the infection the trial version just tells you what infections you have.

Good Luck

Dan

Figment

danny-boy - thanks, will check it out. Problem not apparent this evening (typically) but at least now I've got Firefox 1.0 too.