h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And now I can't get the Netflix home page

It may be time to get professional help...


With your computer, I mean.

Oh, if this carries on much longer I'll need both kinds

But like I said, there's no Microsoft tech support with this version I bought, and I sure can't afford (nor would I want to unless it was a last resort, like when I dropped my laptop and the monitor needed replacing) to take it a PC repair place.

I would try to get some free help from a tech forum. Some has probably seen similar behaviour before and could give you some good clues as to what's going on.

Okay.

*Can't* get http://www.netflix.com/
*Can* get http://dvd.netflix.com/
*Can't* get the login page https://dvd.netflix.com/Login?nextpage=https%3A%2F%2Fdvd.netflix.com%2FDVDRegister

And yet Netflix is able to leave cookies.

Yeah, when I've calmed down a bit from my current state of I'll start searching some forums and see if there's anything that looks likely.

Bit of a pain not being able to update my Netflix queue in the meantime

Gosho
The problems you are hitting with H2G2 are Known and await resolution.

The problems with other sites however seem only to be occurring to you, they could be
your computer or Your ISP

DNS Problems, you could try changing your DNS settings to point at Googles DNS service to eliminate your ISP's DNS servers.

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/
https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

Which has set up instructions

It could also be flakey routing by your ISP which you can't do much about

I don't think it's the ISP. I'm back on the laptop now (no router so I have to reboot the modem and computer each time I switch) and I can get all the pages I can't get on the desktop. I tried the Google DNS - no difference. Google has actually been indicative of the problem in that it's always google.com that returns consistent timeouts in both traceroute and ping (100% packet loss), and 'Waiting for google-analytics' is what I see most in the Firefox status message while the pages that won't load are, er, not loading.

Google ping and traceroute on this laptop though are (mostly) okay. I did get one row of asterisks on the tracert.

OK there would appear to be a problem at your end
Best bet is to compare the internet connection set up on both machines.

Failures waiting for Google analytics give an indication that something is blocking packets going to google.

Is there any adblocking software on the desktop and same goes for the laptop.

PS I will be no help setting up Windows, the last version I did an installation of was NT4.

It would be a big help if whatever the problem is would actually let me connect to all the help forums

How interesting. It seems that most (all, it seems) of the websites I can't connect to, such as Wikipedia, www.netflix (dvd.netflix loads fine) and Mozilla, *will* load if I change http to https.

Now why would it be that I can't connect unless I'm using a secure server, I wonder

I'm also going to have to check the IPv6 connectivity on the laptop later. On this PC in the local area connection status window it says 'No Internet access' for IPv6, even though the check box for TCP/IPv6 is checked in properties.

A Ha

Bloody ISP's with "Transparent caches"

http routed via the cache, https no cache

It doesn't work with all websites - there are still plenty I can't access, those without a secure server presumably, and I still have to jump though all kinds of hoops to get to some sites:

Can't connect to it from the address bar
Can't connect to it from a Google search page
Can't connect to it from the Firefox search field (Google search okay, Google image search no good)
Can connect to it from the address bar dropdown list
Can't connect to it from bookmarks
Can connect to it from browser history



Flushing the DNS cache made no difference.

I was making those parameters up, btw. I know the dropdown list in the address bar is populated from the browser history. Leastways it is the way I have Firefox set up.

How also interesting.

I've just noticed that in the Windows task manager my connection is now shown as being 1Gbps, whereas before it was 10/100Mbps, I think. My top download speed isn't any higher though (about 2700kBps), but when I open the throttle I'm shown as using 2.70% of my capacity instead of 27%.

Well, that sure makes me feel like I'm getting something extra

And we're back to 100Mbps.

I wonder if that's anything to do with that old router I dug out and hooked up a few days ago.

Windows isn't telling you anything about the speed of your internet connection, only the speed of the connection between the computer and the router / cable modem or whatever.

Presumably your computer has an ethernet chip / card that is capable of 1Gb/s, your new cable modem also has a 1Gb/s capability, however your router is older and only does 100Mb max.

not that this matters particularly if your connection is 27KB/s which I take as Bytes / Sec of actual throughput for rough numbers 27Mb/s ish including transmission overheads (packet addressing, check sums etc) which don't count as usable throughput)

with the router back in
are you still having trouble accessing websites?

strange and potentially stupid thought here...
From what you posted earlier
Your lap top is older (and worked at times when the new pc didn't),
Does your laptop do 1Gb/s or is it limited to 100Mb/s ?

Are your ethernet cables cat5 (100Mb) or cat6 (1Gb)?

If the connection problems have gone / reduced with the router back in.

AND

Your Laptop only does 100M



That would indicate either the cables aren't up to 1Gb or one or both of the PC and cable modem aren't managing to talk to each other at 1Gb which probably means the standard isn't quite standard yet.




I've had a similar problem
Cable modem in other room at other end end of flat.
Wireless should easily be in range (laptop is fine from here, PC with USB wireless tells me signal is too low).
So I use a power line adapter rather than run extra cable (200Mb/s)
When I first put it in Packet loss was awful, hardly worked
Changed the cables, both of which had worked fine previously, between the Cable Modem and the powerline and the powerline and the PC bingo
full 200 Mb/s and no packet loss.