I'm running Windows ME, with IE 6. I am having trouble connecting to links on ESPN.com. I keep getting the message "the page cannot be displayed" in IE. A specific example is when I click on links at espn.com ([url]http://x.go.com/cgi/x.pl?goto=http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2208914&name=FPT-2208914-103111&srvc=sz)[/url]. Clicking this would give me the error message. However, I found a fix to this specific link as well as others on espn.com. It would work if I erased the first part ([url]http://x.go.com/cgi/x.pl?goto=)[/url]. So does anyone know what might be the problem? For what it's worth, I have downloaded and tried using firefox on the same links, and have gotten an alert that says "the connection was refused when attempting to contact x.go.com". I have adaware and spybot, and appear to be spyware-free. And to my knowledge, I am virus-free. I suspect i may have host file problems, through my research on the web. But I don't know how to fix this. Any ideas? Thanks, Nate

First try this: ping ESPN.com If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Here's the ping response below... (To clarify -- I can connect to espn.com easily, and many of the links I can access with no problem. The problem I'm having is those links that begin with x.go.com.) C:\WINDOWS>ping espn.com Pinging espn.com [199.181.132.250] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=113 Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=113 Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=82ms TTL=113 Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=82ms TTL=113 Ping statistics for 199.181.132.250: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 82ms, Maximum = 96ms, Average = 85ms C:\WINDOWS>

Then it would make sense to ping x.go.com If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

And my computer said... C:\WINDOWS>ping x.go.com Pinging x.go.com [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64 Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64 Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64 Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64 Ping statistics for 127.0.0.1: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms C:\WINDOWS>

There's your HOSTS problem. 127.0.0.1 id the "localhost", in other words, your PC. Edit the HOSTS file with notepad. It will be somewhere like: C:\WINDOES\system32\drivers\etc Find the line[s] containing x.go.com and put a # at the beginning of the line. You may need to reboot. w2k doesn't, but dunno about Me. If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

some antispyware programs populate the hosts file with banned addresses