Missing Web Site
September 3, 2005 10:18 AM   Subscribe

My girlfriend's computer (to which I am networked) can't access her own web site since yesterday. Called friends, they can still see her site, and her hostserver says there is no problem on their side. We don't have any firewall up, and Norton Antivirus has never been a problem...

She uses Windows 2000 Pro. I ran Spybot, HijackThis, AdAware, and even ran it through the Trend on-line virus scan. Nothing comes up.
posted by zaelic to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)
 
Can she ping it?
C:\ping somedomain.com
C:\ping 234.234.234.234 (her site's IP address)

Run the trace route to see where it's failing
C:\tracert somedomain.com
C:\tracert 234.234.234.234 (her site's IP address)

You can do these commnads with > textfile.txt to save the data to a file or copy from the command window. This will give you a start.
posted by theora55 at 10:23 AM on September 3, 2005


Are you able to access the site from your computer that is networked through her's?

Do you have a DSL/Cable router/firewall device? Try resetting any of those devices. Sounds like some hosed DNS cache somewhere, and that could be anywhere between you and the site (your computer, your firewall, your router, your cable modem, your ISP's list of computers that service your area, etc.. )
posted by dhammala at 11:10 AM on September 3, 2005


Have you checked her hosts file (usually c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts)?

It's a text file. If it has a line saying 127.0.0.1 website.com, where website.com is the name of her website, then delete it, save the hosts file as a text file with no extension, exit your browser and re-enter it.
posted by TheRaven at 11:44 AM on September 3, 2005


Response by poster: The Raven: I checked, but in the text all it says is "127.0.0.1 local host."

dhammala: We have no firewall, really. I'm a slave connected to her via a co-axial cable (I hope that doesn't really define our relationship....)

Theora55: I'll try pinging next. I'm no computer expert, so I'll have to google pinging to do it - I have p[inged before, but I've forgotten how. I'm a musician, fer crissakes...

Thanks all, I'm getting on it.
posted by zaelic at 1:29 PM on September 3, 2005


Just open a command prompt and type "ping address", that's all there is to it. You'll either see responses or timeouts.

If you can ping, then that means packets are traveling to and from the site on a low level. If you can't browse the site it means that something higher up is not functioning, such as a browser/cookie/site access issue.

If you can't ping then it's a lower level problem, like a firewall somewhere, packet blocking, etc.

What is the exact problem when you try to load the page in a browser? Does it time out? Connection refused? Blank page? Error page?

You can also try telnetting to port 80 on the web server. If this succeeds it indicates that connectivity is good on a higher level than ping. If this works but you still can't see the page then it's very likely to be a browser problem and not a network problem.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:01 PM on September 3, 2005


Try clearing your local dns cache.

Click Start > Run.
Enter ipconfig /flushdns in the box and hit enter

It's also possible that the server that is giving you the DNS info (i.e. what IP address corresponds with that web address) isn't updating correctly. By default this is probably automatically provided by your ISP, but you can try setting a specific DNS server instead.

How to change your DNS settings info is here (for XP, but is applicable to Win2K).

As to which server to set it to, try using one of the servers here. There are many others as well.

You should ideally leave the DNS server to automatic (so switch back to automatic when you are done), but changing it temporarily can be a useful tool.
posted by gemmy at 4:18 PM on September 3, 2005


I put the ping example in my comment. Here's more. In Windows: Start, Run, cmd, ok, will bring up the dreaded window of DOS. at the prompt, which will be C:\ or C:\Documents and Settings> or whatever, type:

C:\ping www.herdomain.com > c:\PingName.txt
C:\ping 234.234.234.234 > c:\PingIP.txt (her site's IP address)

C:\tracert www.herdomain.com > c:\TraceName.txt
C:\tracert 234.234.234.234 > c:\TraceIP.txt (her site's IP address)

the "> c:\filename.txt" will put the results into a text file that you can post.
posted by theora55 at 5:14 PM on September 3, 2005


Response by poster: Flushed the DNS cache, no results.
Pinging her website and IP address both time out.
Tracert notes 16 hops, and then times out repeatedly after reaching the IP of an ad site in Japan (she's Japanese, and her site is hosted in japan... http://fumie.main.jp if you are interested.)

We haven't set up any ad blockers on her machine...
posted by zaelic at 6:57 AM on September 4, 2005


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