Foo - computer help please

A colleague of mine has a strange computer issue I'm hoping someone can help solve. The computer can get onto most any website just fine, except one particular one (that all the rest of us have no trouble accessing). Even when I directly input the IP address of that site, it still can't find the site. (And yes, I've verified on my own computer that I'm entering the correct IP address.) It's a WinXP computer running IE. The site requires some level of encryption (not sure what encryption), and I've verified that my colleague's browser supports 128 bit encryption and has all the various protocols turned on.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance for any help.

Start by checking the time, day, month & year of the computer to ensure it's correct. Also, check it for viruses, here is one way that I recommend a lot: http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/scan.txt

If this is a work computer, then get your network administrator to help (if you have one).

Check computer clock, huh? Never thought about that, but I'll take a look. Her anti-virus software appears to be up to date. We could get our research computing people to help out for a high price (we don't buy support contracts for most of our computers, only for certain mission-critical ones), but they also aren't particularly good at troubleshooting specific problems.

I hope it's something as simple as the computer clock being wrong. Thanks for the tip.

Are you guys in the same building? I've had some situations where a home-computer can't access the same sites as their office-computer. Turned out it was the ISP and their DNS configuration.

We're in the same building, with the exact same manual TCP/IP settings other than the IP address. And the problem persists when my colleague takes her computer home and uses her broadband connection, while none of the rest of us have issues (on-site or off-site).

Haven't had mutually free time to take a look again today yet... still hoping a change of the system clock will do the trick, but in the meantime, please keep the ideas flowing. Thanks!

Before paying for help, I would "ping" the website (open a command window and enter "ping IPADDRESS" and "ping WEBSITE" quotes removed, usingthe actual IP address or website name, both should work). If you get anything other than reply times, like errors or it says not responding or such, let us know what it says.

I would try to release and renew the PC's IP address (open a command window and enter "ipconfig /release *" then "ipconfig /renew *" again no quotes). This may fix the problem. Test with another ping or try to hit the site with the browser.

Finally, dump the browsers cookies. It may forget passwords and such. If this is bad, just try a different browser. Download and install Firefox from mozilla.org. If you already use firefox, try IE. Either way, a different browser has different cookies. Maybe it just has a bad cookie.

Any chance that PC has been banned from the site? What kinda site is it? Not being nosey, but it might matter to troubleshooting.

Are the filter settings the same?

The site is our webmail site (https://webmail.scripps.edu/). I highly doubt that the computer's been banned from the site. :)

How does one open a command window in XP? Sorry, I'm the most computer-capable person in the lab, so I get stuck with all this, but I'm a Mac user, so most of the trouble during troubleshooting is trying to figure out what's where.

The site is our webmail site (https://webmail.scripps.edu/). I highly doubt that the computer's been banned from the site. :)

How does one open a command window in XP? Sorry, I'm the most computer-capable person in the lab, so I get stuck with all this, but I'm a Mac user, so most of the trouble during troubleshooting is trying to figure out what's where.
Start Button -> Run or Hold the Windows Key. Right next to the Alt Right next to the Space bar and then hit the R button at the same time. Also known as Win+R (cause you're a winner :D )
type in CMD.exe and hit enter

ping hostname
(see if it resolves)
If it resolves then
telnet hostname 80
It should try to connect and succeed (blank screen)

You can also try
telnet hostname 443
It should try to connect and succeed (blank screen)

If all 3 pass then the problem may be the browser. You may want to try using Mozilla (assuming the site supports and you're not already using mozilla/firefox) ;)

The site is our webmail site (https://webmail.scripps.edu/). I highly doubt that the computer's been banned from the site. :)

How does one open a command window in XP? Sorry, I'm the most computer-capable person in the lab, so I get stuck with all this, but I'm a Mac user, so most of the trouble during troubleshooting is trying to figure out what's where.


Does the site rely on java? Our time-card website (Kronos) uses a javascript to access the site and it's using the old Microsoft-Java. I once updated my java engine and then couldn't access the site. IT had to uninstall the new java and put the old one back. Perhaps the computer's Java has gotten corrupted.

Her anti-virus software appears to be up to date.A good start, but if the problem persists, try my suggested scanner. I was working on someone's home system recently and she had up-to-date antivirus software, but an older generation of it. That system had nasty keystroke loggers that also captured screenshots periodically, and the old antivirus software didn't recognize it even with up-to-date definitions.

1. Check that the website is not listed in his hosts file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\hosts). A file used to block sites (usally ad/spam sites).

2. Check that its not been set as a restricted site. Go to Internet options in the control panel, click security tab, then select restricted sites and click the sites button to make sure its not in the list if any are.

Traceroute it.

go to cmd and enter
"tracert (target site)" and hit enter. It wakes a while , so just be patient.

It will give you a list of every single hop it has to do to get to that site, with DNS names, IP addresses, Ping times, and sequence. Compare this to the other machines, and see if anything is different.

At the least this will let you know for sure that it might have to do with the endpoints and not the crap in the middle.