Intermittent Straight Dope Access - Vista

Factual Questions
1

Usually I’m the one answering computer problems, but this one’s got me stumped. Running Windows Vista 64-bit, I am only intermittently able to access the Straight Dope. Sometimes, like now, it works fine, other times it will hang at the “Looking up www.straightdope.com…” status bar, then give me the browser’s “could not find page.”

When it’s failing, it’s really dead - FireFox can’t access it, Internet Explorer can’t access it. All other web sites I’ve tried are fine: it’s specific to the dope. Sometimes entering “boards.straightdope.com” will work even when “www.straightdope.com” doesn’t, sometimes it won’t. When it fails, it acts like it’s not getting DNS, but it works for every other address.

The same computer, “identically” configured and booted into XP doesn’t have the problem. Other (non-Vista) computers on the same network, using the same DNS, subnet mask, ethernet router, and static ID range can all access it fine. Repairing the network connection doesn’t bring it back, rebooting doesn’t bring it back, clearing the cache from either FireFox or IE won’t bring it back. Time will bring it back; it will just start working again a few minutes or hours later.

I thought it was the fact that Vista configured an IPv6 connection that XP didn’t have, and turning it off appeared to fix the problem once, but that’s apparently coincidence (it’s still off and the problem keeps recurring).

The network is 1000Gb wired ethernet, firewalled, and on static addresses locally (XP and Vista share use the same static address on the dual-boot system). There are no viruses on this or any other system on the local net. The lmhosts or whatever Vista uses contains only default values; it’s a relatively new installation, and I haven’t modified it. The network uses a local (also Megabit ethernet) windows 2003 server for DNS, with a backup of my ISP’s DNS. Both DNS systems have no trouble supplying DNS information for “straightdope.com” variants on other systems on the net. I considered that Vista’s caching DNS locally, but even so, it’s not like the straight dope is changing addresses all the time.

Once I happened to have a Ubuntu virtual machine running when it happened – the virtual machine (running in Vista) could access the Straight Dope even when the same Vista machine could not. I haven’t thought to try a ping when it’s failing – I will the next time it happens (at least once a day).

At this point I’m about to chalk it up to “another annoying Vista bug,” but it seems very strange that it would be JUST the straight dope that would make this manifest.

Any ideas, fellow networking gurus?

2

I got a chance to try the ping experiment. “ping www.straightdope.com” works (DNS resolves, no packet loss), even when I can’t connect with a web browser. Very, very strange.

3

It’s not a Vista problem. I have XP and get that also. That is the message you get when the browser decides that it should have gotten a response and since it didn’t posts that message. Sometimes it’s the board servers, because I have nothing else accessing the internet. Sometimes another download is taking up 100% of the bandwidth, and I have to stop the other access so the message boards can download. The change over of the message board equipment reduced much of the problems, but you still hit slow times for this server.

4

I have intermittent no-response from boards.straightdope.com on several machines using different everything, including different physical links to the internet.

I have had this for years although it’s been worse the last roughly 60 days than it has been since they got the new server installation (12-18 months ago?).

I conclude it’s a server-end problem.

5

I’m still not convinced. I’m sitting here right now, typing on my Mac. It’s working just fine. I boot Parallels and it works in XP - even slow, “emulated” XP. My wife’s computer can see it in both Mac and XP—and all the while I’ve been testing these configurations, the Vista box tells me that it can’t find the server “boards.straightdope.com” – which it could an hour ago.

I know about selection bias and all that, but in my experience, this is a 100% Vista problem. I have NEVER witnessed a case where a computer or OS on my LAN other than my Vista boot could not see the boards (when other computers could), and the Vista box does it constantly (at least once a day). Sure, the boards are down completely occasionally, and not accessable from ANY system, but this problem is manifesting on only one computer, while all other computers around it are working fine. If it’s a server problem, I’ve got an enemy among the SDMB network admins.

Oh, and I have 6mb/sec DSL access; plenty for all other systems on my network (and at the moment, the whole network is idle except for me playing with this problem, anyway).

6

I’m not sure, but there’s something in the back of my head which says that Vista has some issues with DNS.

Ahhh… here you go.

See also this.

7

Explaining it further that other computers on your network are getting through, it likely is a Vista problem. One computer on the network shouldn’t have the problem, while others are fine.