I frequent a website that for the last few days to a week I’ve been unable to access. When I type in the address I just get that screen that comes up saying ‘Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage’. I don’t have this problem with any other site I visit. I sent a private message to someone I know that frequents the website and they say they’ve had no problem getting on it.
I use AVG Anti-virus Free edition, which doesn’t include a firewall. I’ve wracked my (admittedly feeble) brain and can’t come up with any reason why all of a sudden I can’t get on the website.
Any ideas? Do I need to provide more information? I can post the website address if that’s allowed.
It may be temporary. When an internet gateway went down, there were a handful of sites I wasn’t able to access for almost two weeks because my loser ISP didn’t repropogate their servers.
This also happened when a friend of mine moved his website to a new host. My idiot ISP didn’t repropogate their servers, and my connection sort of got lost and was unable to find his site. Most ISPs repropogate every 24-48 hours. So any changes out there in cyberspace are updated in that time frame.
ETA: Unless you have a loser ISP like mine that’s lazy about it.
Thanks for that. So does that mean I can prompt my ISP to repropagate their servers, or am I just at their mercy? This has been going on for nearly a week - wouldn’t they repropagate within that amount of time?
If you see something like this (using google as an example)–>
>c:\WINDOWS\system32 racert.exe www.google.com
Tracing route to www.l.google.com [64.233.169.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms L100.VFTTP-07.BLTMMD.verizon-gni.net [71.179.4.1
]
3 6 ms 7 ms 7 ms P3-3.LCR-02.BLTMMD.verizon-gni.net [130.81.39.15
4]
4 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms 130.81.29.130
5 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 0.so-6-0-0.XL2.PHL6.ALTER.NET [152.63.3.81]
6 11 ms 12 ms 24 ms 0.so-6-0-0.XL4.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.0.130]
7 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 0.ge-7-0-0.BR2.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.41.157]
8 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms telia-gw.n54ny.ip.att.net [192.205.32.49]
9 15 ms 15 ms 14 ms tbr1.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.8.114]
10 11 ms 12 ms 12 ms 12.122.113.46
11 14 ms 15 ms 14 ms 12.88.155.14
12 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 209.85.130.18
13 14 ms 14 ms 15 ms 64.233.175.169
14 16 ms 17 ms 16 ms 216.239.49.149
15 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms yo-in-f99.google.com [64.233.169.99]
You can successfully reach the webserver from your PC and your problem is IE related. If so, type in the IP address (the 64.233.169.99 in my example) into IE and see if that allows you to hit the site.
Is this IE7? I believe I recently read about a window’s update breaking IE7.
It took a week and a half for my ISP to re-propogate thier servers, but most do it within 24-48 hours. That’s why when you register a domain name they tell you not to expect to see it active for a day or two. Three days is unusual, four or five is not unheard of, but is lousy service.
If other people who use your ISP in your area are having the same problem it could be your ISP needs someone asking “So, when’s the last time you re-propogated your servers?” (Warning: Most support personnel will have no idea what you’re asking and will be useless). I only found out it was my ISP because a guy I now in the neighbouring building was having the same problem. The problem didn’t exist at work, same ISP but different server. Getting through to the right person took hours.
Do you have a friend who bring over his/her computer to use your internet account as a test? If you have a friend who can use your account at your house just fine, then something’s whacky with your system not your ISP.
The traceroute larsenmtl is a helpful tool too. I used a traceroute to determine that my crappy ISP was following a route through a gateway that was no longer working. Basically, the rest of the world was taking a well marked detour on the road, while my ISP had all it’s traffic stuck at the dead end of the construction site.
Karl Gauss - I tried that site and it says it’s just me.
Swallowed - I tried accessing the site from my husband’s computer but same result.
Larsenmtl - I tried your trick but I’m not too sure of the result. At hop 14 it says ‘request timed out’ and repeats that up to hop 30. When I type in the IP address I get something completely unrelated (a website called zahars.com). And yes this is IP 7.
traceroute traces the path of your request through the various servers that connect your home computer to the website’s server. It would be more helpful if you could paste the entire output of the command here. You may redact the IP addresses (bracketed numbers) for the first 3 hops or so if you have security concerns.
You should also try using a different browser, such as Firefox ( http://www.getfirefox.com ), but it if traceroute fails it is unlikely to be a browser-specific problem.
Hmm, I’m getting timeouts around that server too, but my computer eventually connects. The web site is definitely loading very slowly, and indicates a problem on their end somewhere.
Microsoft describes how you can increase the amount of time Internet Explorer will wait for a website to respond (the default for IE 7 is 30 seconds). It’s worth a shot. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/181050
I’m a bit hesitant to start messing about with the registry. That kind of stuff is way over my head. I poked around a bit last night and learned a bit about proxy sites and was able to connect to the site through a few of them. They’re not particularly fast but at least I get access.
Just thought I’d update - as of today I can finally access the website in question again. No idea why, maybe the stars are aligned just right.
One clue is that yesterday I was having trouble accessing the internet at all, even though I was connected to the wireless. I unplugged/replugged the wireless router and was again able to access the internet. Didn’t try the troublesome website until today so not sure if the two are connected.
So thanks again for all suggestions. If nothing else I now know how to do a traceroute, find out if it’s ‘just me’, and clear my browser cache!