Need help here guys, have run out of ideas.
I have a friend in the U.S.A who has a Toshiba laptop running XP SP3. The machine is hard wired via ethernet (DSL) to a "westell 7500 its a verizon wireless modem" (that's the description verbatim from my friend). She has Internet Exporer 7, Firefox and AOL installed and none will connect to the net, error message is same with all 3.....no internet connection. YET she can connect to the net via Skype and talk to me on that same machine. There is no 3rd party firewall installed. In fact there are no security programs at all. AVG had expired and my friend uninstalled it.....she hasn't replaced it to date. She also has a desktop computer which is hard wired to the same modem/router in the same way, she is having no such problems with that machine.
Things we have done/checked so far:
Checked and confirmed all settings in Control PanelInternet Options are correct.
Run full scans using MBAM and SAS....no malware found.
Reset Windows Firewall to defaults.
Disabled ALL startup items via msconfig and rebooted....no change.
The symptoms suggest Port 80 is being blocked somehow BUT that cannot be via the modem/router because the other connected machine is quite OK, does that make sense??
So that would leave an application specific to that laptop (right?) BUT restoring Windows Firewall defaults and disabling all startup items did not fix it??
Any ideas/suggestions would be much appreciated,
Cheers.....JIM
Can she try to connect to https://www.fortify.net/sslcheck.html? I'm curious to see if the problem is limited to port 80.
Can she run "ipconfig /all" from a command prompt? I'm interested in seeing if she is receiving an IP from the router and what it is.
can she run "ping https://davescomputertips.com" from a command prompt? What is the response?
Thanks Dave...I'll run all this by her in the morning. Get back to you with the results.
Thanks again,
JIM
and never forget your good buddy telnet.
from a command line:
telnet davecomputertips.com 80
telnet davecomputertips.com 21
telnet http://www.google.com 80
telnet http://www.google.com 21
a successful connection will yield a blank black screen (yes, that's counter intuitive). If the connections succeed via telnet (very low level connection method) than the issue is with the browser / proxy settings. If no success here I would check the host file and DNS settings.
good luck!
OK, thanks Zig. Will ad that to the 'to do' list. Get back to you both with the results ASAP.
Cheers...JIM
Dave - Here are the results:
Can she try to connect to https://www.fortify.net/sslcheck.html? I'm curious to see if the problem is limited to port 80. [color=#FF4000:3c2o5cpj]No, got this message "Cannot Display the web page"[/color:3c2o5cpj]
Can she run "ipconfig /all" from a command prompt? I'm interested in seeing if she is receiving an IP from the router and what it is. [color=#FF4000:3c2o5cpj]Yes, IP address = 192.168.1.33. I ran the same command on my machine and compared settings. All compared OK.[/color:3c2o5cpj]
can she run "ping https://davescomputertips.com" from a command prompt? What is the response? [color=#FF4000:3c2o5cpj]Yes, response was: Ping request could not find host.[/color:3c2o5cpj]
DNS setting in LAN properties is set to Automatic.
Connected to the Verizon modemrouter and STATUS shows; Internet Status = connected, DSL link = connected. Checked firewall status and it is set to: None-Allow all traffic.
Ziggie: Couldn't use the telnet commands...the service isn't started. I tried starting it but got an error message;[i:3c2o5cpj] Error 1068 The dependency service or group failed to start[/i:3c2o5cpj].
So tried starting the RPC service, that started OK but the telnet service still wouldn't start...same error message.
What next?
JIM
OK, have her ping 207.46.197.32 so we can see if it's a DNS issue.
That's Microsoft BTW.
OK Dave, pinging 207.46.197.32 was unsuccessful: [i:3pkkozz9]Request timed out - Sent 4 packets.....Lost 4 packets.[/i:3pkkozz9]
Also pinged 208.67.222.222 (OpenDNS) and that was successful: [i:3pkkozz9]Sent 4 packets.....Received 4 packets....0 lost. [/i:3pkkozz9]
Thanks mate,
JIM
I can't ping 207.46.197.32 either.
can she get to 74.125.95.99 in a web browser? (that's http://www.google.com)
I saw this on another computer using dial up and the solution was to install XP SP3. Something corrupted the networking stack that was repaired when SP3 went in.
So...since SP3 is already installed...um. yeah.
Things you could try that I don't think would work:
* point her computer to Open DNS / Google
* uninstall SP3, reinstall SP3
* Restart the DNS Client Service
* stop using DNS.
Beyond that, I think at this point rebuilding the machine is next on the list. I hope Dave has a better suggestion.
Oh! Try this command: ipconfig /flushdns
on the off chance the dns cache is corrupted.
If I recall correctly she had AVG installed and it was expired. I also note you said you reset the Windows Firewall. Is it possible that she had AVG Internet Security? If so, I bet it is a corrupt firewall driver in the network stack. Possible that the corrupted file prevented complete removal at uninstall. AVG removal tool - http://download.avg.com/filedir/util/av ... emover.exe
First thing I would do now is swap the ethernet cables at the router. If that works the router has a bad port. If that doesn't work I would try LSP Fix - http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm, which will allow attempt to repair the stack or remove any items that aren't supposed to be there.
Ziggie - Already tried setting the DNS addresses to OpenDNS.....no go. We tried the 'flushdns' command as you suggested but that did not fix it.
Dave - Tried swapping the router ports around but the problem persisted on that machine only so all must be OK with the router. BTW: The router has 4 connection ports and she is using them all for 4 different computers. The other 3 machines are all browsing OK.
My friend will download the AVG removal tool plus LSP-Fix and put those files on a flash drive. I'll step her through using them tomorrow.
Pretty sure the AVG version she was using would have been the freebie with no firewall but worth a try anyway.
BTW: Discovered a new feature (new to me that is) in Skype which will let my friend share her desktop with me. Only additional requirement is connected webcam. Man, you reckon that doesn't make it a whole lot easier to help someone who is not so computer savvy!!
Thanks again Guys,
Get back to tomorrow,
Cheers....JIM
UPDATE:
OK, my friend downloaded both AVGRemover and LSP-Fix. We put them on a flash drive and ran them on the errant machine. No change!! AVGRemover more or less said there was nothing to remove. LSP-Fix removed 8 items but the problem remained.
At this stage I am thinking it's gotta be malware, so;
We downloaded (to USB flash drive) the portable version of SAS which included latest definitions. Ran a full scan on the machine....it found nothing.
We also ran HijackThis. After going through the logfile I found references to the Ask toolbar, which incidentally, did not show up in either Control PanelAdd or Remove Programs nor Revo. Located the Ask Toolbar folder in Program Files, which fortunately, included an uninstaller. Uninstalled the toolbar and ran HijackThis again. All references to the toolbar in the logfile were now gone. Removed half a dozen entries with (file missing) or (no file) on the end.......still could not connect with any of the browsers. There was nothing else in the logfile which looked suspicious to me.
My friend has been using ASC to clean the hard drive so we restored [i:2oul1txx]all[/i:2oul1txx] the changes saved in ASC's restore center.....no difference.
BTW Ziggie - We checked the hosts file and found nothing untoward. Only the standard entry.
It has me beat!!!!
Cheers....JIM
Have you checked the Hosts file to see if everything is being redirected to 127.0.0.1 ?
It's located at C:windowssystem32driversetchosts (no extension) and is editable with notebook.
Also, just for chuckles, try unchecking the QoS packet scheduler in the properties of the network connection.
Oh... and have you tried resetting the TCP/IP stack?
I could post the details here but Micro$oft can do it better ... check here:
http://support.microsoft.com/k.....letmefixit
They also have a Fix-It-For-Me button closer to the top of the page at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299357 but you never learn anything that way.
Hey Tomecole - Yep, checked the hosts file....all good.
Have not tried unchecking the QoS packet scheduler. I really don't think that is the answer but then, I haven't had a good chuckle for a while either so I'll give it a try.
Haven't tried resetting the TCP/IP stack either.....didn't think of that but it is a good idea!!
Thanks for the suggestions....much appreciated,
Cheers.....JIM
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