web pages not loading

September 10, 2010 6:53 PM

Why won't my web pages load?

Something's happened to my computer. It's an Acer Aspire One, hooked up to the internet with a wireless modem. There's another laptop running on the same wireless and working fine. When I try to access a webpage on the Acer, it starts loading, and I can see the little box on the upper right that says "Document: x%" When it's working properly, this little box quickly zooms through from 0 to 100% and then the web page appears. Now, it sometimes stays at zero, sometimes goes up to 24 or something and then just stops. The webpage never appears. It was working fine a few hours ago. What gives?

posted by crazylegs to computers & internet (2 answers total)

There are going to be at least half-a-dozen different possibilities here, so let's try the easy an obvious stuff first:

1. Have you tried restarting the Acer?

2. Is the other laptop doing anything bandwidth intensive? (BitTorrent or other P2P, for example)

3. Are you *certain* that no one else is using your wireless network?

4. What happens when you plug in the Acer directly to the wireless modem? (I'm assuming that it also has some wired ports on it too.)

5. If you run a test at speedtest.net, what kind of results do you get?
posted by Wild_Eep at 7:40 PM on September 10, 2010

I plugged the cable directly into the computer and got: download 7.48, upload .75. I plugged it back into the wireless and got: download 3.8, upload .51. So it's a lot slower, but it doesn't seem to explain it completely not working. And at the moment it's working again. Very weird. I would say it was something as dumb as not having the cable connected properly to the wireless before I moved it, except that the other computer was working fine. ???
posted by crazylegs at 4:41 AM on September 11, 2010