[GrandpaBlaze]

Hey all, I've got a situation in which I need some assistance.

I nearly exclusively use my own personal laptop for everything. However, occasionally I jump on to a desktop computer. Today my browsers no longer work on the desktop computer. The desktop is running Win XP and is on a wireless network.

It connects to the network fine. Once it is connected to the network, I can ping different websites (i.e., ping www.yahoo.com connects and gets a response).

However, when I open a browser (either IE or Firefox) I get a message indicating it cannot find the page to be displayed. I'm assuming browsers use a common communication protocol (different from ping) and that that protocol has been broken or has been corrupted, however, that is just an assumption on my part.

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

Gramps...

[Diable]

It sounds like you may have DNS problems.With a normal router and wired network the solution is to reboot the router(unplug the power and then plug it back in).I don't know anything about wireless networks however.

[liekomgj4ck]

Yeah I agree, try restarted the network by unplugging the router for 3 minutes and then reconnecting it

[Yega1979]

If you had a DNS problem, you wouldn't even be able to ping any websites by their domain name.

Could it be that you have your wireless router access point configured to be acting as a Proxy server? If that were the case, it would explain why you can connect to the network, ping but not surf.

From IE, try going to tools-->internet options-->connections-->lan settings and check the checkbox that says "use proxy server", then enter the IP address of your router. See if that works.

[GrandpaBlaze]

Why would it be the router DNS?

Doesn't ping use DNS to find the domain locations? I have another laptop on network and it works fine. The problem is exclusive to the computer as three other computers on the network all work fine (one wired, two wireless).

I have Zone Alarm on the problem computer and when I type in an address in the browser and click "go", Zone Alarm which will show network activity, shows no network activity. It is as though the browsers don't have the ability to talk to the network whereas ping does.

Thanks.

Gramps...

[GrandpaBlaze]

Originally Posted by Yega1979

If you had a DNS problem, you wouldn't even be able to ping any websites by their domain name.

Could it be that you have your wireless router access point configured to be acting as a Proxy server? If that were the case, it would explain why you can connect to the network, ping but not surf.

From IE, try going to tools-->internet options-->connections-->lan settings and check the checkbox that says "use proxy server", then enter the IP address of your router. See if that works.

There is no proxy settings for IE. Nothing has changed from when it was working yesterday (or even this morning) to now except that my daughter got on it and was online for a while.

I'm suspicious she may have inadvertently downloaded something that has corrupted the browser communication.

Thanks.

Gramps...

[Diable]

A domain name like basketballforums.com is a alphabetical representation of the website's IP.One represents the other,but they are not the same thing.Every ISP has their own Domain Name server that translates what you type into your brower into the correct IP address and this is where your problem would probably be.Some ISP's have very poor DNS server performance or they simply have intermittent problems.

[GrandpaBlaze]

Originally Posted by Diable

A domain name like basketballforums.com is a alphabetical representation of the website's IP.One represents the other,but they are not the same thing.Every ISP has their own Domain Name server that translates what you type into your brower into the correct IP address and this is where your problem would probably be.Some ISP's have very poor DNS server performance or they simply have intermittent problems.

But if that were the case, why would the problem be specific to one computer and three others work fine? After I ping'd yahoo.com and got a response, I tried typing in the IP address that answered but still got no response.

Thanks.

Gramps...

[Diable]

try this.Right click on My Computer.click manage to bring up your computer management console,look into System tools and click on event viewer and look through the messages.You should see your problem listed,probably under applications.Serious problems are noted by icons that look like stop signs and minor ones look like caution signs,and there'll be a lot of innocuous information icons you should ignore.

[yakbladder]

Long-shot but it's also possible that either the Zone Alarm program was set or Windows Firewall was somehow activated and set to block port 80. Since pings come in on different ports/protocols than web traffic.

As said earlier, check your event log first.

[GrandpaBlaze]

Originally Posted by Diable

try this.Right click on My Computer.click manage to bring up your computer management console,look into System tools and click on event viewer and look through the messages.You should see your problem listed,probably under applications.Serious problems are noted by icons that look like stop signs and minor ones look like caution signs,and there'll be a lot of innocuous information icons you should ignore.

Ok. Went to System and saw some DCOM errors but they seemed to be pretty early in the day. Applications seemed ok.

However, I then disabled the wireless network and then re-enabled it. After re-enabling and getting the connection back, I F5'd to refresh the system log and had the following error (not necessarily word-for-word):

The IP Address lease 0.0.0.0 for network card with address denied by DHCP Server 192.168.2.1 (the DHCP Server sent a DHCPNACK message)

Thanks.

Gramps...

[e_blazer1]

Sorry I can't be more help, Gramps, but I can tell you what my wife always tells me when my PC acts up: "I never have any problems with my Mac."

Sometimes I want to throttle the woman.

Good luck.

[Diable]

Well this is what I would try on the hypothesis that you've got some sort of conflict in your network.Turn off all the computers on the network and then reboot the router.If you're lucky the network problem will solve itself.I don't know enough to do more than tell you how I've fixed similar problems in the past.If your problem is just one computer you may have some corruption in your tcp-ip.I've had that before and it sucks to try to figure out what tiny little dll you need.

[GrandpaBlaze]

Thanks Diable. I think I may have to go down that "shut down all computers, reset the router" route - probably tonight when we head to bed I'll give it a shot.

Thanks.

Gramps...