Strange inabilty to connect with one box and one site

[RocketmanX]

Hey guys,

Not my usual forum but my Brother is having a very strange prob with his comp here in our offices that we can't seem to resolve.

He has a clan site he's a member of but can't reach their site from his box but we can everywhere else in the office. His comp can reach any other site anywhere else, no problem. It's just this one site and no others, and only from his comp.

We've double checked IE settings and network settings step by step from his box to mine and they are all identical. Had the crazy idea it may be an issue with our IP address and the site, so I changed the IP on the router (not the gateway IP) and still nothing. We also deleted cookies, etc....

We are running different boxes (different nics) with no apparent NIC problems.

We can't replicate this problem with any other site.
I'm baffled and getting a little frustrated with his constant questioning about the same things over and over

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

BTW- forgot to mention that we are on a cable modem and a 10/100 ethernet network. Firewalls were turned off to trouble shoot that possibilty but no change.

[Trickle]

Tried a different browser? Tried going direct to a URL within the site - something other than the main page? Tried searching for the site in yahoo and then clicking on the search result link to then get to it?

Do you have any employee monitoring software etc running on the machines? Has he installed something such as Peer Guardian that he's not telling you about?

[RocketmanX]

Thanks Trickle but yeah, all of what you mention has been done and checked. We tried Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird, and we tried several different url's from all over the site.
It's just plain wierd.

What makes it even wstranger yet is that for an hour on Thursday it started working and then back to not being able to be found.

It seems to be with the DNS but we both use the same same DNS server IP.

I'm bewildered.

[BlackTower]

Is there some entry in the local hosts file of the machine preventing it from getting to that site?

[RocketmanX]

Not sure what you mean BlackTower?
I assumed something liek that since it's machine specific but not sure the specifics of what said?

[Paul Adams]

He means the HOSTS file that sits in:
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
(or C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC)

It's a text file for resolving names to IP addresses without having to talk to a DNS server, and is looked at before names are looked up in DNS.


Easiest way to check is to try a PING of the URL from that box and another WORKING one - we're not bothered if it says "request timed out", only what the IP address it resolves to.

[RocketmanX]

Thanks guys, I'll check it out in the morning.

Sounds like that could be it.

[RocketmanX]

Thanks for the help guys

We figured it out this morning.

The primary DNS was down and all machines were using the secondary but my bro's was not for some reason when connecting to that site. Used the secondary for all other sites though. Don't understand that but then again I'm not exactly a trained network guy

Changed both his dns servers and it now works. Changed all other machines while I was at it in case the secondary goes down too.

[BlackTower]

nslookup command is your friend!

[RocketmanX]

Thanks Blacktower.

You're talking a little beyond my realm of knowledge but I will soon know what you mean