Okay, let's play a game. It's called why the F*&@ (that's FUCK by the way) does my computer do this!

Over the past few weeks, my computer randomly decides to stop loading web pages. It'll chug away until I eventually get the 'Page cannot be displayed' message. Once this happens, I cannot load any web pages. As far as I can tell there is nothing specific that causes it to do this. It may be fine for a day or two, then it craps out. In other words, I cannot recreate this problem, it just starts happening. So far the only fix is to reboot the system (not entirely true, so read on). As I'm looking for insight from all you geeks out there, I'll start the game with a few clues:

1. This is a *new* computer. It's been up and running for over 2 months. The computer itself is not new, but I juiced it up with extra memory, new drives, new video card, etc.

2. I do not have a router. I run Norton Personal Firewall 2003. Yeah, it's an older program, but I have it running on my old PC and my laptop also. It's actually a decent firewall app.

3. When the problem occurs, I can still load secure (https) sites, can still play WoW, and streaming radio continues to play, so it's not like my internet connection is dead. My old computer (now in the kitchen) surfs fine, so it's not a modem problem.

4. If I disable the Norton firewall, all web pages load fine. So, it's obviously something with the firewall. However, I have picked apart the firewall options, disabling them one by one and still no good. Even after I disable *every* option within Norton, I still cannot load pages. I have to actually right-click the icon in the task bar and disable that for things to load, even after I have disabled each component within the app.

So, does anyone have any suggestions as to what the F is going on? Currently I have disabled Norton and enabled the Windows Firewall. I know nothing about the Windows Firewall and really do not want to use it. I will be buying myself a router soon, but this problem has annoyed me so much that I can't give up on resolving it!!

well, port wise generally websites use port 80, https uses 443 so I can see how one would work while the other wouldn't. As to why it stops, not sure. Could be any number of things such as spyware/malware that somehow manage to shut down the port.

It could also be an error in your network card, you might be able to bypass some of the discovery and enter a url like http://www.victorious-secret.org:80 and see if it loads. You could also find a port scanner to see what exactly is going on with your ports on your network.

I would suspect malware first. Have you scanned yet? Or tried another browser?

I pretty much keep my PC's clean. Yup, recently updated my virus & spyware software and ran full scans - nothing. I originally suspected my network card. There could still be a problem with it, but I have installed the latest drivers for it. And yup, have tried another browser too. Same thing happens with both Firefox & IE when the problem occurs.

Other then a re-install of your firewall or switching network cards, I don't have much else to offer.


Have you fed the magical elves inside the box?

Other then a re-install of your firewall or switching network cards, I don't have much else to offer.


Those are on my to-do list. I don't have faith that either one will fix it, but won't know until I try.


Have you fed the magical elves inside the box?

You have to FEED them? But, they're magical, dammit!

Just kick it, if it dose not work it will make you feel better! :)

I believe it is a ID-10-T error on the users part.

<3 Rinader.

I believe it is a ID-10-T error on the users part.

Yeah, and by the way, your most favorite tech with the initials of JS has now been permanently assigned to your area. We're also moving his desk down there, so he will be sitting right next to you.

The 2003 version of Norton is somewhat notorius for this. I had a similar problem a couple of years ago. I finally traced it down to an addon for Photoshop. If I ran Photoshop, used that addon, I could not load non-secure web pages afterwards. There was something in the Norton Firewall threat scanner that would lock up port 80 and refuse further connections.
I upgraded to Norton 2005 and the problem went away. I'm not sure if it was a case of the upgrade fixing the problem, or just the fact of a new install. You might want to completely reinstall Norton as a starting point.

Good luck,
Slowman

Thanks for the input Slowman (and screw you Rin!).

I uninstalled Norton tonight, then ran the Norton cleaner. Norton has a tendacy to sink it's tentacles deep into the registry, so just uninstalling it isn't good enough. Guess that's why they have a cleaner. Then I reinstalled Norton.

I was also running McAfee 8.5 enterprise version (it's good working in IT, you get to "test" apps at home!). This version is fairly new at work, so it's another suspect on my list. Although it's only been a few hours since doing this, so far so good. I am currently running without virus protection (oh my, I need a PC condom), but I will install McAfee 8.0 tomorrow, since I can't find a copy here right now.

As of right now, everything is loading okay...knock on wood. Okay, I probably just cursed myself. The problem with this version of Norton is that it really doesn't give you any details about *why* it does what it does. Oh well.

Dude! You should have bought a Dell!

Oh well. PC was fine yesterday. Fired it up this morning to check news and stuff. After a few minutes, it stopped loading web pages again. This time, however, disabling the firewall did not help...still couldn't load pages. So I shut down and went to work. Then it happened again this afternoon. This time I actually went to the Symantec web site and checked there. Lo and behold, this is a known issue with their products (yes, prodcutS, plural). Right now I'm running with the Computer Browser service set to manual instead of automatic. Only time will tell. I would say that Norton firewall software sucks, but I have it running on two other systems with no problems. There's got to be some combo of things running that's causing this shit. My babbling shall end now...

You know - I didn't want to say anything about this because I know some people are rabidly loyal to the Norton products.

Whenever we have a customer who buys a new system with a Norton product preloaded on it we remove it the moment Windows loads for the first time. We've got nothing personal against their products, but crap like you're experiencing tends to be a problem. It saves a lot of headache for both us and our customers in the long run.

Our home office runs the firewall on our D-Link router, and we also have a D-Link SecureSpot (it's nifty). Then, on our computers we just run Windows Firewall, Windows Defender, and AVG Anti-Virus. So far we haven't had any problems, but now that I've said that expect my Vista box to burst into flames at any moment.

I used to really love Norton products, but for some reason the 2006+ line has just gotten completely insane. I've had to uninstall the virus scan because every hour or so it randomly shoots up to 100% CPU use, making anything else impossible. It's crazy.

I use the Symantec Corp edition and it is so much better. no problems.