Am I Blocked? Proxy Servers...

I've been trying to help my girlfriend log into her online college account. If you would be so kind as to take the time to read this and offer any suggestions or solutions, we would be very grateful. This is a very confusing matter for a number of reasons, so let me bullet point what encountered for easier reference:

- Girlfriend was able to access her eCollege account about 2 weeks ago from her laptop (Win98, severely outdated, although she does use Firefox)

- About 2 days ago, she attempted to login again and Firefox directed her to a blank page with the "Page Is Taking Too Long To Respond/Problem Loading Page/Connection Timed Out" error. It's been giving her this error ever since.

- At first I though maybe it was the eCollege's server that was down for some reason but I checked the site while I was at school (showed up fine) and later that day she was able to login to her account via a local internet cafe. Came home later that day and tried to access site from the laptop again... still unresponsive.

- Talked with eCollege's Tech Support team. No help at all.

Now here's the progress I made TODAY:

- This situation oddly reminded me of how some public schools block certain sites (i.e. Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, etc.) from being viewed on their network by students. No idea why eCollege would block my girlfriend's home IP Address, but it was the only theory I had to go on.

- Tried using a Proxy Server website, remembered that I could use those back in high school to get around blocked sites by concealing my IP Address.

- By typing in the eCollege website into the Proxy Server redirection, the main page of eCollege was finally accessed (and oddly enough, rather quickly). Girlfriend successfully logged in using her information and reached her course list page.

- Now this is where it gets confusing again. I thought I had solved the problem but once any link located on the course page is clicked on, I receive an error from their system claiming I'm trying to access the pages through an erroneous way (wrong starting page, etc.). I'm guessing this is due to the Proxy Server website I used...?

This is my dead end. I have no idea how to get any further then the course page (the page displayed immediately after logging in). I'm not all that well on the details of Proxy Servers or how they work... are they not supposed to be used to access much information after a login into a system? I also tried disabling my firewall and aside from using Firefox, also tried IE7 and Opera. Also, I know this sounds like n00b-speak but could it be due to the fact that her laptop runs on Win98... (additionally, her laptop is a reallllly old Thinkpad, 2GB harddrive). Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated seeing as she has multiple assignments waiting to be turned in to her professors. Once again, thanks for your time and input!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

As far as proxies go, the one you used may have had some "anonymizer" functionality. This, essentially, would stop sites that check where you come from from working properly. Here's some more information.

As to whether or not she's blocked--you mentioned that it worked perfectly at an internet cafe. I have had on numerous occasions my internet just... stop working for particular sites for awhile. Gamingforce is a good example, as I have been able to get at the rest of the world, just not this site, for days on end before.

Not sure if that's what happens here, but it's worth a mention.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Try a "Trace Route" from her end. (Start an MS DOS prompt, type in "tracert ecollege.com" and press enter). Paste the results here.

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

Originally Posted by Zergrinch

Try a "Trace Route" from her end. (Start an MS DOS prompt, type in "tracert ecollege.com" and press enter). Paste the results here.

"Unable to resolve target system name <eCollege website address>."

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

That would be caused by DNS issues, but tracking down the problem isn't always straitforward.

Check the IP configuration of her network adaptor by typing ipconfig \all at a DOS prompt. If the output is too long, you might want to redirect it to a text file with ipconfig \all > ipconf_output.txt.

There should be entries for a DNS server listed in the output. Try pinging them in a DOS prompt with ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of a DNS server.

You should also double-check that there isn't an overriding entry in the Hosts file (located in the <boot drive>\<Windows folder>), since any entries in that file are considered first before querying a DNS server.

I was speaking idiomatically.