HELP !!! Internet stopped working !!

[jazzhound]

Hi, I'm helping out a customer with a problem he's having (I'm tech support).

The guy says ftp, mail (smtp,pop), ICQ all work but his browser IE (win2k) won't at all.. Tried different sites with all disappointment. Why ???

Reinstall IE or can there be a settings problem? I advised him to reinstall it, for now anyways.

Any insights?

TIA

 

[JohnnyKnoxville]

Hmmm you arent one of the *cough* suckers that tried to upgrade to 6.0??????

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

Hmm.. when that happens here generally that means either the service is completely down at the ISP, or someone unplugged something here and forgot to plug it back in.

Oh! I misread that nothing at all was working, sorry! Re-install like you suggested, maybe, or try a differnt browser like Netscape. Would a traceroute also help to find the problem (could be a problem along the line somewhere?)

 

[TwoFace]

jazzhound: If ftp, mail and ICQ work it's not his internet (as your title says) but rather something either with his browser and/or firewall/proxy. That is my educated "guess" at least. If he has a proxy/firewall make sure his browser settings are correct for it (ie IP/name of the proxy/fw, login-name/password) also in case of a firewall make sure that the firewall allows outgoing connections to port 80 on sites outside his LAN.

I'm sure I've forgotten something, but at least it's a starting point.

Two-Face
My stats:
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Gamma Flux

 

[jazzhound]

I'm pretty sure it's something with IE, but I just can't pin point it.

Here's the deal. He claims the settings were left as is. ICQ retained it's connection, he also tried email, and FTP (CuteFTP) which all seem to respond. His browser is the only culprit here. It won't load up any sites at all. ISP (that's me) is fine, we're not experiencing any abnormalities (not that I can see) so that' sout of the question.

ping/tracert seems to be fine as well.

IT'S INTERNET EXPLORER facking up !!! Grrr

EDIT: After suggesting he re-install IE via ADD/REMOVE program I havne't heard from him. All things considered, this process should take no longer than 10 minutes, but it's been a good 20 minutes, so I'm concluding that it works now.

Oh well..

 

[Azraele]

Could it have been that it just needed a patch/update from windowsupdate.microsoft.com?

 

[guyver01]

can he ping by FQDN? Can he ping by IP?

narrow it down...



<< After suggesting he re-install IE via ADD/REMOVE >>



holey geeze!! be glad you don't work where i do... that could get ya seriously gone!
IE is so integrated into the OS, that Add/Remove fscks up the OS half the time!

 

[Viper GTS]

For future reference, I'd have started with the basics:

Does he have connectivity by IP (eg can he ping from a DOS prompt by IP)?
Does he have connectivity by DNS (can he ping yahoo.com from a DOS prompt)?

Once you've verified TCP/IP connectivity by both IP and domain, run through the browser settings. Make sure he's not set to connect through a proxy or that hideous &quot;automatically detect settings.&quot; Of course if he's supposed to be using a proxy make sure that's configured correctly.

Can he browse by IP (if he puts 204.71.200.243 into IE does he get yahoo)?
Can he browse by DNS (yahoo.com)?

If he has TCP/IP connectivity but the browser's not working (and you've already checked the browser settings) I would extract the winsocks &amp; reboot.

Certainly not exhaustive, but it's a start.

Viper GTS

 

[palad]

If he's running 98 (maybe also for millenium), try reextracting winsock.dll, wsock32.dll, and wsock.vxd, then reboot. I have run into issues like this before where reextracting these files solves the problem.

 

[Zapster]

Sounds like a bad power cable. Try pulling out the cable and reinserting it about 10 times.

 

[bigbootydaddy]

firewall would have been my first guess.

 

[Rogue]

Hate to come in and be an ass, but how can the &quot;internet&quot; be down? Maybe someone can't connect to the internet, but the internet itself cannot be down unless the millions of computers that comprise it all simultaneously become non-functional somehow (ie.-global nuclear devastation). Just a pet peeve of mine. I am a Sys. Admin, and occasionally someone can't connect to the internet, usually because they are stupid and forgot to log in to the domain. Anyway, I get members of management that tell me &quot;The Internet is down!&quot;. Well guess what, in terms of troubleshooting you just narrowed my search down to several million computers completely and totally beyond my control. Thanks a million (bad pun intended)!

 

[Emulex]

maybe he has a proxy server setting in IE5.5

and its down.

 

[Viper GTS]

Rogue:

I don't think it's ignorance, I think it's more a simple confusion of terms. For most people the &quot;internet&quot; is what they get when they open IE and get a web page. The reality of the internet has never been explained to them, nor would they understand if it WAS explained to them.

Just interpret &quot;internet&quot; as &quot;internet access&quot; and what they say makes a lot more sense &amp; won't piss you off so much.



Viper GTS

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

have him click &quot;file&quot; then go down to the bottom of the list to &quot;work off line&quot;

is it checked!??



Just a suggestion