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A friend asked me to look at her computer. Her husband was updating their Norton Antivirus when internet connectivity died (they have a cable modem).
I tried a number of things with no luck (new network card, new router, bringing it home to try my network). The machine is running WindowsXP Pro and here are the symptoms.
1) When starting up in normal mode I open Internet Explorer and get the "Cannot find server or DNS Error Internet Explorer"
2) I can pull up the command window and ping localhost, dns, google, yahoo, etc., with no problems.
3) I have had a couple applications tell me they need to update and they can connect and update their files.
4) From everything I have seen on the web it seems to be a DNS related problem, however, everything looks good from the command window.
ipconfig shows the following:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix..: bay.charter.net
IP Address....192.168.1.103
Subnet Mask...255.255.255.0
Default Gateway......192.168.1.15) If I start in Safe Mode, I can log into the internet and browse with IE with no problems. This is repeatable.
6) I have tried winsockfix, I have tried "uninstalling" TCP/IP, renaming the computer. Can't reinstall XP cause this version is much newer than the CD I have.
7) Interesting point, there have been combinations of things I have done that have allowed the browser to bring up the Home Page briefly, however, two things happen. It will either stop in mid-download (starts giving me the red Xs), or download completely and just not allow me to go to another site. It gives the impression that it starts to work normally and then its like it remembers that it isn't supposed to be working.
8) I have turned off a number of the loading options to see if something is loading that is killing my ability to browse, but that did not stop the issue either.
9) I have cleaned out the system and done numerous scans with multiple tools to assure it is not spyware, virus, etc.
I have pretty much at the end of my knowledge regarding what to do. Does anyone have any ideas? If it is a DNS problem, how do you fix it? Any information would be appreciated.
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Sounds like a DNS hijack - Sam Spade can't find an ISP with a DNS "bay.charter.net", and neither can I ping it. Is charter.net their ISP? Is suspect a trojan popped in while NAV was being updated.
Remove the entry from the DNS suffix tab in TCP/IP properties, also any specific DNS server addresses from that tab. If it's not there, it'll need a registry fix - post back. Also post the complete results of ipconfig/all
You need to run Microsoft Antispyware on that PC too, to look for a trojan that'll just put the settings back.
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If you need to do a reinstall of the OS, as long as your disk is the same version (Home or Pro, and both are the same, corp. or non-corp. edition), you can use your disk and her cd key. If yours is SP1, and theirs was SP2, that's irrelevant.
"Republicans in Congress are moving to ratify a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, thus ending the Iraqi insurgency."
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>Name: Rambler
>Date: July 31, 2005 at 04:50:36 Pacific
>Subject: Can Ping, Can't Browse
>Reply:
>Sounds like a DNS hijack - Sam Spade can't
>find an ISP with a DNS "bay.charter.net",
>and neither can I ping it. Is charter.net >their ISP? Is suspect a trojan popped in
>while NAV was being updated.It pings as "dns.bay.chartermi.net"; don't know why it is not showing up correctly (I may have missed the "mi" at the end of charter as a typo).
>Remove the entry from the DNS suffix tab
>in TCP/IP properties, also any specific
>DNS server addresses from that tab. If
>it's not there, it'll need a registry fix -
> post back. Also post the complete results
>of ipconfig/allI currently have no entries in the DNS suffix tab. Ipconfig/all shows the following:
Windows IP Configuration
Host Name - FAMILY
Primary DNS Suffix - <blank>
Node Type - Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled - No
WINS Proxy Enabled - No
DNS suffix Search List - bay.chartermi.netEthernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS suffix - bay.chartermi.net
Description - Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC
Physical Address - 00-0C-6E-35-DC-6A
Dhcp Enabled - Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled - Yes
IP Address - 192.168.1.103
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway - 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server - 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers - 24.247.24.53, 24.247.15.53
Lease Obtained - Sunday, July 31, 2005 10:12:05 AM
Lease Expires - Monday, August 01, 2005 10:12:05 AM.
>You need to run Microsoft Antispyware on >that PC too, to look for a trojan that'll
>just put the settings back.
I will download this and give it a run. Thanks for taking a look at this.
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Got the problem resolved by reloading WindowXP. Still don't know what the trouble was; everything looked the same after reload as it did before reload...oh well, I am running so...
Thanks everyone for the help!
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You probably got jacked somehow, and it was half fixed, not all the way. Sometimes it is unfortunately easier to just reinstall the OS.
Glad you got it fixed though.
"Republicans in Congress are moving to ratify a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, thus ending the Iraq insurgency."
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This sounded like an interesting problem. One would think that it would be a DNS resolution issue, but you said you could ping everything from a command prompt with indicates that the resolver itself was working correctly. However when you tried to view those sites through IE it failed.
The sole purpose of DNS is to do name to IP translations. Once that translation is complete, the browser takes over and communicates with the web server exchanging HTTP commands as the browser renders the HTML it is being passed.
If I would have seen this post earlier I would have recommended that you telnet to a web server, google for example, on port 80 and issued some HTTP GET commands to render some HTML independent of the browser. This would have tested the DNS resolver, TCP/IP configuration, and HTTP protocol.
If all of this would have worked, then the problem would have most likely been a browser hi-jacking issue.
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Internet explorer --> Tools --> Internet Options --> Connections --> LAN Settings --> Uncheck "Automatically detect settings". Had the same issue. This solved it.
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