Why are some major websites suddenly not working on my computer?

September 16, 2007 10:37 AM

Why are some major websites suddenly not working on my computer?

My Internet works perfectly except for a few major websites like bankofamerica.com and unlv.edu. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer can't connect to them. I've always been able to connect to them until about four days ago.

I have ZoneAlarm for my firewall, but I haven't made any changes to it, nor have I installed any new software or hardware or anything.

How can I make these websites work again? I really appreciate your help!

posted by jordanian2 to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Scan your computer for spyware--some spyware tries to redirect your legitimate pages to fake pages to get your info.
posted by nalyd at 11:01 AM on September 16, 2007

Maybe this from yesterday.
http://ask.metafilter.com/71611/Dell-Vista-DSL-WTF
posted by JayRwv at 11:39 AM on September 16, 2007

O.K., so it looks like it could be a router problem. I'm running XP and using a Linksys wireless router with DSL to connect to the Internet. Is there a setting I should change to fix the problem?
posted by jordanian2 at 12:33 PM on September 16, 2007

You haven't installed something like Peer Guardian, have you? That can cause odd problems like you describe.
posted by procrastination at 1:27 PM on September 16, 2007

In a command window, see what you get with:

nslookup bankofamerica.com

tracert bankofamerica.com

pathping bankofamerica.com


p.s. my nslookup on bankofamerica returns:


Non-authoritative answer:
Name: bankofamerica.com
Addresses: 171.159.65.173, 171.159.193.173, 171.161.161.173


But yes, spyware or overly aggressive anti-virus/firewall can cause problems like this too. Spyware S&D may help.
posted by idb at 1:40 PM on September 16, 2007

Have your tried changing your MTU settings? It appeared to do the trick with yesterday's linked thread.
posted by jmd82 at 2:21 PM on September 16, 2007

Could it be the internet company itself? Comcast was having weird outages a few days ago in my area, making some websites (like cnn.com) inaccessible but others working just as it would normally.
Call your ISP and ask if there's any outage problems in your area - that is, if you haven't already solved the case.
posted by itchie at 2:54 PM on September 16, 2007