RE: http://www.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/165700.html Okay, I found that thread using google... Sorry if I'm digging this up but I have exactly the same problem. I'm running Windows 98 SE and have an ADSL modem connected via USB. What happens is I can gain access to a lot of sites but every now and then, some crop up that simply don't load. I get that "page can't be found" error. Yet I have a Win XP machine plugged into the same modem / router via ethernet. That can access every diconnected site just fine and dandy. I got so fed up with it I formatted the PC. Then re-installed everything. I then went to Microsoft Update and downloaded all the critical updates. I checked the web-sites and found that the previously inaccessable sites were now accessable. Only now, I've downloaded more "critical updates" and the thing's not working again. All I can think is that one of the updates has messed something somewhere. Given I also had this problem on my Win 98 machine: www.frankprovo.com/win98ie6filesproblem.htm I'm inclined to think it's another "Microsoft problem" that's occured since I got one of the updates. Question is... which one? I'm about to go through and uninstall them and see what happens. I have a hunch it might be the .NET framework which I installed after I'd checked that things were working.

It is my opinion there is really not much reason to use .Net framework on any home computer. I seriously doubt that they had Windows 98 in mind when programming it. Rule #1: Good Computers don't go down. Rule #2: There is no such thing as a good computer.

I still haven't figured out what was going wrong at daveshorty's end. Your problem might be simply a matter of timing. The web server might be down at the time you try. Trying again later will confirm that. It wouldn't hurt to post links to sites you can't reach in this thread. Many of us here have windows 98 with the latest updates.

No, it's not an issue with the site being down. I've got two computers hooked up through the one modem. The 98 machine can't get onto the sites while at the same time, the XP one can load them fine. Some sites that don't load: - http://www.adelaide.edu.au - http://www.ocba.sa.gov.au - http://www.unisuper.com.au - http://today.reuters.co.uk ... and it's not just .au ones (though they do appear to be affected more than any others - of course that could just be because I visit more .au sites than normal ones and so don't find as many others). There have been others where I couldn't get the site to load no matter how much I refreshed. Fire up the other PC and it works fine. Refresh it again on the Win98 one and it's "Site not found!". Anyway, after systematically removing each and every upgrade and rebooting, the problem still occured. In fact, it messed with everything completely and my internet went off and I got errors on boot-up. Heh. I've now done a complete format (again) and am re-installing things one by one. So far, I've got all the updates from Microsoft (including .NET), Firefox and ZoneAlarm firewall back on and I can access those known failing sites... for now. I'll keep installing stuff and hope to find something which knocks the sites out. Something I can then point at and go "AHAH! SO IT IS YOU!"

All righty, update. List of currently known inaccessible web-sites: - www.reuters.com - www.ocba.sa.gov.au - www.adelaide.edu.au - www.unisuper.com.au NOTE: There are a bunch of .au addresses that I *can* access so I'm not sure if that heavy .au leaning actually means anything (other than I know those sites exist and can't access them). I formatted my PC. Re-installed windows. Made registry backups (regedit > export registry) as each new update and program was installed. I was able to successfully install: - All updates from Microsoft.com - Web browser (firefox) - E-mail (Eudora) - ZoneAlarm That's all I had installed. After each installation, I made a registry backup and checked to see if the websites were accessible. At all times, they were. Then, on about the 3rd day after formatting, the web-sites stopped working. I ran one of the registry backups and re-installed it into the registry (backup 10 which had all updates but was missing ZoneAlarm, Eudora and some browser plug-ins, backups 11-13 "failed to install"). I restarted the PC. After that, the web-sites were accessible again. I re-installed those programs just to be sure (and fix up any registry stuff) and everything still worked. I made a new registry backup: Backup 14. But again, on about the third day, the web-sites were not accessible! I made a registry backup of when things weren't working: Backup-not-working. I then re-installed Backup 14 (which now had FileZilla and a range of other programs installed) and rebooted. The websites worked. I tried then re-installing Backup-not-working, expecting the websites to crash (given it now appeared to be something in registry that was getting changed for some reason). Everything still worked. :/ I read a Microsoft article which says that "regedit >> export" doesn't seem to do a complete backup of registry. So I ran scanregw to make full backups and tried the above. None of these backups want to work ("Operation failed!" when I try to re-install them). My dad and I had a theory that it was mum using Eudora which was causing the problem (somehow). Every now and then she sits on it for hours sending and receiving e-mails. She did this on several occasions during our most recent test-run however and each time we checked the websites. Everything worked. However, on about the 3rd day... the web-sites were inaccessible. So it seems to be about 3 days after either formatting or re-installing a working registry that the websites become inaccessible. We're now running again and this time, keeping track of every time we can access the sites, to see if it does occur on *exactly* the third day again (something we've neglected to do, thinking instead it was a program error). So at the moment we're wondering: What does Windows 98 do every 3 days that'd mess up our ability to access certain web-sites and why just those web-sites, why not every web-site? Is it a virus? We've run some online virus scanners (one at McAfee and Trendscan I think) and both of those came up clear - apart from one occasion where two files in our Eudora/attach directory came up as containing viruses. We removed them but have had the inaccessible web-sites problem occur 3 times since that occasion (both files had, to my knowledge, never been executed). Any wild suggestions as to what's going on?

We appear to have solved the problem. Our modem was conncected to the Win 98 machine via a USB cable. Apparently that's problematic (according to a tech guy at some store) and by buying a Fast Ethernet Switch and a network card and connecting it that way, it's actually solved the problem. That is, so far at least, anyway. We haven't had it knock out any websites after 5 days so far.

All righty, it crashed again. With the switch we went ahead and setup a network. As part of that, we removed a machine we were using and replaced it with the Win 98 one. After we moved things around, the problem reappeared. We couldn't get access to some websites (adelaide.edu.au was the one we always checked). However, we now ALSO couldn't get access to shared folders on the Win 98 machine, while the two XP machines COULD access the Win 98's shared folders. Win 98 kept saying it "couldn't access the network". After some rooting around, I ran a command prompt and typed "ipconfig /all". Oddly enough, the Subnet Mask was incorrect. It was displayed as 255.0.0.0 instead of 255.255.255.0 which is wat the Win XP machines had. So I went ahead and manually entered all the correct info into Control Panel > Network > TCP/IP > Properties including the DNS details, Gateway, IP Address and correct subnet mask. Rebooted and it worked. Not only did I have the network back but the web-sites were correctly functioning. I've now found this: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Networking/Q_20835642.html Which seems to be the same problem. Of note: win 98 client holds incorrect subnet mask The final fix was: winipcfg /release winipcfg /renew All I can think is that DHCP (not that I know what that is) on Windows 98 is horribly "bugged" and after some time, it fails to obtain a new lease like it should ever few days. So instead, the lease expires after about 3 - 4 days and we get hit with our problem. I hope this helps someone.