Odd browser problem: old webpage, but only on 1 specific site?

Factual Questions
1

I have a weird browser problem: when I go to one specific website (www.stonewalldfl.org), I see the front page from about 2 years ago (Feb 2, 2004, actually). Always the same old page. Everybody else sees the current page. And I see current pages at other websites.

I used to see the current info on that website. I don’t go there real often, so I don’t remember when it started showing me the old page, or what (if anything) I changed at that same time).

It’s been happening for a couple of weeks now. I’ve restarted my PC several times over that period, even had it completely powered off for several hours.

I’m using Windows XP Home, running Mozilla Firefox browser (current version 1.5.03).
I’ve tried refreshing the site, clearing my cache, shut down & restarted my browser, etc.

And …

it happens with IE browser, too. Which I hardly ever use. On that one, I’ve deleted internet temporary files, deleted history files, deleted cookies, and verified that my options are set to check for a newer page every visit to the website.

Since it happens with both browsers, and they use different cache files, etc., I suspect it is something on my machine.

So I checked the file C:\I386\Hosts; it contained only the sample Hosts file from MS with only 1 data line: “127.0.0.1 localhost”. That looks OK to me.

I’m stumped.
Can anybody suggest other things I should try?

2

Wow that is odd…

I wonder if maybe your ISP has cached an old DNS record for the site? What do you get when you ping it? (start - run - cmd - ping stonewalldfl.org) The IP address I get is 63.247.138.12

What happens when you go to www.stonewalldfl.org?1=1 (try to trick the browser into thinking it’s a new page)

Does this happen throughout the site or just the front page?

3

Well, I understand that others who use the same ISP as me can see the webpage fine. (I’ll see if I can verify this.) Wouldn’t that contradict this?

I get this:


Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>ping stonewalldfl.org

Pinging stonewalldfl.org [209.32.150.39] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.32.150.39: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=61
Reply from 209.32.150.39: bytes=32 time=171ms TTL=61
Reply from 209.32.150.39: bytes=32 time=187ms TTL=61
Reply from 209.32.150.39: bytes=32 time=171ms TTL=61

Ping statistics for 209.32.150.39:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 171ms, Maximum = 187ms, Average = 177ms

When I go to 209.32.150.39, I get an empty (available) page at my ISP.
Note – at one time, this website was hosted at my ISP. It may even still be hosted there.

Nothing different – I get that same 2-year-old webpage.

Well, the page is mostly entered thru that front page. I could only guess at a couple of inside pages:
When I go to http://stonewalldfl.org/links, I get a 2-year-old links page.
When I go to http://stonewalldfl.org/news/ or http://stonewalldfl.org/legal/, I get a Directory index of files (webpages) under that topic. All of them are 2-year-old pages.

I’m still stumped.

4

Are you sure that’s the actual hosts file that your Windows XP installation uses? AFAIK Windows XP installations usually have the hosts file at

**c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts **

or

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

5

You’re getting 209.32.150.39 as the IP for that site (per your ISP).

I looked it up, and it should be 63.247.138.12 per ZipperJJ, WHOIS at Netork Solutions, and a traceroute from my computer.

Try using a text editor to add this line to your Hosts file and see if this fixes your problem:

stonewalldfl.org 63.247.138.12

If it does, you’re just a victim of a bad local DNS entry. It should clear up in the next update. Remove or comment out that line periodically to check