All header and no content

December 26, 2009 2:09 PM

Why won't metafilter load for my wife, but it does for me?

Me: running WindowsXP and using Firefox 3.5.6
Her: running Windoes & and using Firefox 3.5.6

Home network is a cable modem going to a wireless G router.

When I go to the metafilter sites, everything loads fine. When she does to any of the metafilter sites, the header area loads up and then none of the posts show. The same thing happens with Internet Explorer. Most other websites load fine, although she sees similar issues with TelevisionWithoutPity where the header loads and then no content.

I tried turning off the windows firewall, and that had no effect.

Any ideas?

posted by Lokheed to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Which version of Windows is your wife running?
posted by bingo at 2:20 PM on December 26, 2009

Response by poster: Sorry, that's Windows 7 that she is running.
posted by Lokheed at 2:23 PM on December 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

Try clearing your browser cache and rebooting. It could be something bad wedged in the cache, or it could be a poisoned DNS cache.
posted by dws at 2:24 PM on December 26, 2009

Did she somehow end up enabling "parental controls" in the browser? I think that Metafilter gets rated "adult".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:24 PM on December 26, 2009

She's probably running Windows 7 -- "&" is shift-7 on the keyboard :)

My guess is that she's somehow got a bad DNS entry cached, perhaps for one of the FMpub sites, or some other similar ad server that's preventing the page from completing rendering.

Open up a command prompt (on her machine) and type:

ipconfig /flushdns

Then close the browser, reopen, and try again.

Don't forget to turn the firewall back on!
posted by intermod at 2:24 PM on December 26, 2009

First question to ask - what ( even tiny, apparently innocent ) thing or things changed recently? New software installed?

If you go into device manager on her laptop, are any of the devices marked with the exclamation-point sign, meaning possible hardware failure?

If you run "ipconfig /all" ( start -> run -> cmd, then in the dos window that appears, type in ipconfig /all and hit the enter key ) on both laptops, you should see the same values for "Default Gateway" and "DNS Servers". I'm assuming you're both using DHCP, so you should see the same "DHCP Server" address as well.

Basic network connectivity check, from the same dos box: type in "ping" then the value for your default gateway. My default gateway is 192.168.0.1, so I'd type

ping 192.168.0.1

If you get this:

Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

The network connection you your gateway is probably ok.
If you see:

Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: Destination host unreachable

Then you're not connecting to your wireless access point, or your laptop's configuration is having issues.

I'm guessing that when the banners of a site loads but the content doesn't is indicating that you're loading graphics from the caches of the browsers. Try hitting shift-reload on one of those pages and see if you can force a complete reload.

If you can get some places but not others, then it's a software question.
posted by HannoverFist at 2:26 PM on December 26, 2009

Virus maybe? Have you scanned it recently?
posted by OrangeSoda at 2:28 PM on December 26, 2009

I remembered wrong. Firefox doesn't do content screening. Sorry about that.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:31 PM on December 26, 2009

My hunch is that if she turns off javascript in Firefox, the page will load.
posted by kickingtheground at 2:35 PM on December 26, 2009

Response by poster: Hm. Now the plague has spread to my computers, and multiple browsers. The issue has to be upstream from me. It is inconsistent, but happening now on both my Windows XP machine and on my Mac Mini. I tried switching to OpenDNS for my DNS servers, set on both the computers themselves and on my Belkin wireless router, with no consistent improvement. It is very strange.
posted by Lokheed at 8:44 PM on December 26, 2009

Did you try any of the tools available at pingtest.net, speedtest.net and/or dslreports.com? If you can get there from any of your machines, they should be able to provide you with quality and speed measurements to help determine if this is an ISP issue.

Another interesting test, if you have access and interest, would be to take one ( or more? ) of the laptops to a public wi-fi hotspot, attach to their infrastructure, and see if the problems persist or magically clear up. If the problems continue on a different network, then it's virus-scannin' time. If not, it's your home network.
posted by HannoverFist at 9:18 PM on December 26, 2009

Can you connect your cable modem directly to one of the problem computers, without the wireless router? If the problem persists, that would eliminate the wireless router as the cause.
posted by Mike1024 at 2:24 AM on December 27, 2009

It might be interesting to watch the load attempt using an HTTP sniffer.

I know of one, but it's a bit of a pain to set up. It's Proxomitron. It runs on your local computer and you set up your browser to run through Proxomitron as a local proxy. You can disable Proxomitron itself, so that it doesn't interfere with the traffic, and then pop up the "Log Window" and see all the HTTP transactions that go by as you're trying to load the page.

But there might be a better one available that I've never heard of.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:34 PM on December 27, 2009

Best answer: It turns out that it is an issue with my internet provider (Bright House Networks and RoadRunner). Numerous other customers are complaining about the same issues. I expect it will be resolved tomorrow.
posted by Lokheed at 4:25 PM on December 27, 2009