Problems accessing certain Sites

I've been having problems recently accessing certain web sites. What is strange about this is that every now and again when I try to access these sites they will be accessible without any problems, but other times they won't show up at all. What's more is that sometimes, I'll only need to reload the page to get it to show up correctly and other times I'll have wait a while before trying again.

Also, some of the pages will be accessible but won't show up correctly, as if parts of the information did not reach my comp. I've been having this problem in both IE7 and Firefox so I'm pretty sure it's not a browser issue. Also, the sites that I have a hard time accessing are rather popular and as such I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the sites' servers. This problems happens mainly with Google, Hotmail, Wikipedia, Youtube and Yahoo. I have absolutely no problems accessing GFF at all, thankfully.

I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with spyware since I run checks regularly and with several different programs and they all come up clean.

The error page that shows up is your standard "Firefox/IE cannot find the server requested".

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this is starting to be quite an annoyance.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Clarification questions: Are you always in the same place and on the same hardware?

If you are, has anything been done recently on the computer besides surfing? New programs, even innocuous stuff? Plug-ins or add-ons?

Had any autoupdates come down the pipe recently, as there have been a spate of zero day fixes they've been patching for, and unrelated consequences are common with those things.

How regular are there issues? I pretty regularly have the same issue with Gmail / Yahoo Mail / and Hotmail over inferior internet connections, as they require a number of handshakes and sub-component referrer sites to download. If even one hangs it often kills the process.

On a weird coincidence, you could be some strange, lingering remnant of the server crash that happened last Monday, where a Latvian router fed bad IDs to a bunch of Cisco routers and tripped a multi-referral bug. I wouldn't put too much faith in that though.

Most amazing jew boots

I am in fact always in the same place and on the same hardware, I'm using a desktop computer and the router is a Siemens Speedstream 6520 so I imagine that last bit doesn't apply in this case.

The issue is frequent enough for it to be quite annoying. I pretty much can't check my email without having to load up both firefox and IE in hopes of being able to get Hotmail to load correctly in one of the two (sometimes both work, sometimes only one of the two and sometimes neither work).

I've been having this issue for a few weeks now and the only thing I've done that I can think of that could have caused a problem is that I used Spybot S&D's immunization feature. However, if I recall correctly, I did that after this started so that probably isn't it. I might have also updated java, but I'm pretty sure I did that a while before this started happening.

If it helps, I usually have both Spybot's Teatimer and Mcaffee VirusScan Enterprise + Antispyware Enterprise 8.5.0i running, but I have been for quite a while now (at least for the last year, way before this started). I set-up a static IP address for torrents and whatnot, but that was also quite a while ago and I'd never had this problem until the last few weeks so it would also be surprising if this were the cause of it all.

By the way, thanks for the quick reply!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I get these problems now and then, and I've confirmed that it was my ISP's fault. As the problem was solved with a simple refresh, I've learned to live with it. Obviously if it were happening a lot more, I'd complain to my ISP and have them check the phone lines (for my DSL).

Perhaps this is the case with you as well, Rychord. You can test this if you have multiple computers, and use the same connection.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

No problem, although who knows if I'll be able to help you. Best I can offer are suggestions.

At this point, it seems like its a question of trying to do problem dissection / compartmentalization. One at a time, and in combined groups, you might try swapping for a roaming IP and disabling the various scanners and firewalls you have running. Also be sure to check the Win Security Settings to make sure it hasn't re-enabled something stupid of its own accord. On an off shot, you might also try removing the immunizations (I think this is possible within the program, or with an uninstall / reinstall) An uninstall, destruction of directory, and reinstall of Firefox might also be a quick check.

One annoying issue it could be is that those sites are using referrals to other ad / third party sites which one of your security products has decided it doesn't like and is causing the connection as a whole to drop. This could create intermittent connection failures as they are randomly rotated.

If all fails, you can also try restarting Windows in Safe Mode (but with net functionality) and see if that solves your problem. If it does, then you can track down what sub-processes weren't started during that boot.

Edit: Good point from Zerg in between my reply, and if you have a friend with a laptop you could also try that. Also, router kill/restart.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll try and test each of your suggestions out and see if I can fix this thing. Unfortunately for now I don't really have access to another computer that I could test out my connection with, so that will have to be the last thing I check if everything else fails. I'll post back if I figure it out, as it may help others who eventually run into this problem to know which programs or features might cause this.

Thanks again!

Edit: It seems it was the static IP that was causing the problem. I have no clue why it only started recently doing this since I've had it setup that way for at least a year or two, but at least I've fixed it so that's all that matters really.

Strange though...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Glad to hear one of the suggestions worked. Not sure at the moment why the static IP might have changed its behavior, although it could be something farther downstream about how your ISP is handling IP traffic. They may be doing something like IP filtering to try and limit certain types of traffic and its having the unintended consequence of hampering your web loads.

FELIPE NO

Yeah, my current ISP doesn't exactly have the best record for customer satisfaction, but we get our internet in a bundle and I don't really feel like going through the hassle of shopping for ISPs, but I'll certainly look into it in the future.

For anyone wondering, I'm in Montreal and my ISP is Bell. Try to avoid it if you can!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

My mom's from there, so I actually visited in my youth every once in a while to see family and such. Even being half Canadian though, not too much danger of needing internet in Montreal these days unless my job sends me that way.

Honestly, I'm pretty convinced that all major ISPs in the mainland N. America are awful, and the small ones aren't a whole lot better, as most have to contract out for backbone to the major ones. Comcast seems like they've got one privacy slight or big brotherish scheme they're embroiled in every other day, AT&T is known to have backbone monitors in several of their hubs, Bells got horrible service in the US at least, and Qwest aggressively tries to invade markets like Walmart by pricing at a loss until locals starve and then jack rates. Not sure who the heck you should go to.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I wonder if it could possibly be because of your modem/router trying to assign your computer an IP with DHCP, and somewhere failing because of your static IP.

Glad to hear you solved it though, must have been extremely annoying.

There's nowhere I can't reach.