Internet is fine and dandy. Except everything "Google owned" won't work. What's up?

Factual Questions
1

Toshiba Satellite L775. Quite a nice laptop for me the last couple years. I love it.

Windows 7(64 bit), using Firefox 30(I actually updated from 29 to attempt to fix this error). I have tested this on Chrome as well and the issue remains. To go further, I have not noticed this problem on my Ipad and my wife’s computer(very old) has not had an issue.

I have a Zyxel router and an Oooma between me and the modem. Both appear to be running fine, of course. And again, the Ipad, Ipod, and my wife’s computer are smooth.

Oh, even our Roku loads up Youtube fine. Noteworthy, I suppose.

Here is what I am experiencing:

  1. Google and Youtube frequently don’t load. They get stuck on either “Transferring data from…” or “Waiting for…” and sit there. Oh, Google Drive won’t open either, of course.

  2. Google analytics and various other google-sites often hold up complete loading at outside web sites. Uh, “google content” was one of the things not loading on another site. I’m sure there are others.

  3. A lot of the time, they work fine. I’d say 50% of the time they aren’t working and 50% they are.
    Here is what I’ve tried:

  4. Deep scanning for virus/malware/spyware using Avast!, Spybot Search and Destroy, Windows spyware detector, and lavasoft Adaware.

  • Found…Zippo!!! I’m clean, including after a re-boot scan I did that runs before Windows fully loads.
  1. Actually, that’s about it. I can’t imagine what is causing this error.

Any help or suggestions? Thanks!

2

Check your ‘hosts file’ if you have one. You may have set a google domain or google related host setting causing this issue.

Check proxy/DNS settings to see if you’re using a different domain name server than the other machines.

3

Thanks. Can you walk me through those two suggestions? I don’t mean to be dense, but I don’t know how to do those. Also, if the DNS is different, what should I do?

4

I’ve noticed this on my home computer in recent days/weeks. I’ve even seen a thread on this in our city’s city-data forum… but no one has been able to figure it out except we all have the same ISP (Wow/Knology).

5

If this is the problem, you could try Google DNS. They have instructions on changing your DNS settings here. At the very least, you can improve the load times of your webpages and reduce the chances of getting an annoying redirect from your ISP.

6

Actually, it strikes me that if you are having problems with Google related sites, a link to a Google site is probably counter-productive. Here are the instructions written out:
[ol]
[li]Go the Control Panel.[/li][li] Click Network and Internet, then Network and Sharing Center, and click Change adapter settings.[/li][li] Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS. For example:[/li] [ul]
[li]To change the settings for an Ethernet connection, right-click Local Area Connection, and click Properties.[/li][li] To change the settings for a wireless connection, right-click Wireless Network Connection, and click Properties.[/li][/ul]
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
[li] Select the Networking tab. Under This connection uses the following items, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) or Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and then click Properties.[/li][li] Click Advanced and select the DNS tab. If there are any DNS server IP addresses listed there, write them down for future reference, and remove them from this window.[/li][li] Click OK.[/li][li] Select Use the following DNS server addresses. If there are any IP addresses listed in the Preferred DNS server or Alternate DNS server, write them down for future reference.[/li][li] Replace those addresses with the IP addresses of the Google DNS servers:[/li][ul]
[li] For IPv4: 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4.[/li][li] For IPv6: 2001:4860:4860::8888 and/or 2001:4860:4860::8844[/li][/ul]
[li] Restart the connection you selected in step 3.[/li][li] Test that your setup is working correctly; see Testing your new settings below.[/li][li] Repeat the procedure for additional network connections you want to change.[/li][/ol]

7

Thanks, folks, I’ll let you know.

8

Also check whether you are in China

9

Not to jinx it, but the problem appears to have disappeared on its own. Any ideas why this might just stop being a problem?

Nope, though I lived there for a few years and Google worked just fine.

10

Be glad you’re not here now. I can’t even reach play store on my android phone. Let alone search, maps, translate… Everything Google is 100% blocked (because of the tiananmen anniversary).

11

Can’t you use a workaround, like using an anonymous IP or something?

12

I use a paid proxy service. Most expats do the same.

It’s slow though, so it was nice previously that google searches worked often enough, and google translate, maps and the like never had a problem, so I only needed to fire up the proxy for searches that didn’t work, youTube and gmail.

Now I need to use my proxy for everything google-related it’s a big PITA. And my Android phone is virtually bricked until I can learn to use all the local equivalents.