There is a wonderful and definitive article on this subject here:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/tweaks/4._MTU

My problem turned out to be a nasty piece of spyware which Norton couldn't see but I downloaded spybot and it cleared it up nicely.

NOOO WAAYYYY!!!!, this MTU stuff actually works damn fine!!, it's 100% legit!!, here's the situation, a few days ago I went to a website that I visit frequently and I never had any problems loading that website EVER, until a few days ago, I just use to type in the URL of the website and it would come up like almost instant (just a few seconds maybe on a bad day lol) but before now starting a few days ago the damn thing was taking forever to load and when the load does complete all I got was a firefox message telling me "The Connection To the Server Was Reset While The Page Was loading" or if you're using Internet Explorer "Page Cannot be Displayed" GOSH!!,:

so all along here I was thinking it was just this particular website since most other websites "seemed" to have been working just fine, that is until I checked Microsoft.com!!! , the same thing happened over there too so instantly I came to they conclusion that maybe everything is not as fine as I think it is , infact I may just have this problem with yet another website that i may know all to well so what I did was go back to some of the websites that I had bookmarked and some popular ones to see if some may exhibit the same problem and low and be hold I did infact encounter this page loading problem with some websites that use to work excellent and gave absolutely no trouble so right there and then I knew there must be a problem with either my computer or my internet connection settings , you know things to do with my computer and my internet specifically, something that I just don't know about and hadn't' encountered before.

I did a search "Can't Load/access Microsoft.com" or something like that and came across this website read what I saw about MTU settings then went to do a little bit of research on that(to tell you the truth I found some information on the MTU issue a couple of times before but none where quite specific to the point of a solution) and came across this site
"http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5793" and on the example of the MTU and Ping testing/solving etc they got it explained pretty clear! , so I started following the steps mentioned in their examples and as it turned out my MTU was set too high and it was just a metter of me tweaking my MTU settings from about 1472 or 1500 to 1464!! and that worked for me.

I went to the Microsoft site and it's loading smoothly also went to the other sites I was having this issue with also and they now are working as they should, to tell you the truth I would have had this MTU stuff fixed earlier if I hadn't overlooked it and regarded it as "irrelevant" lol, I absolutely did not think that this MTU stuff was my problem, those same website worked with the same modem i'm using with the same "NOW" "problematic settings" it had before I edited the MTU stuff , so i really had no reason to believe it was my modem/ "Ethernet" modem that was the problem in fact before I thought it was a problem with my internet connection I actually though it was a problem with that one websites server lol that is until obviously when I encountered the problem on other previously working websites.

I guess this happened as the result of some abrupt computer malfunctioning that occurred with my PC a few days ago which forced me to reinstall windows XP and my DSL

Hi all,

I have the exact same problem as the original poster of this thread. However, I am a complete amateur when it comes to the complexities of computers, so I would be very much appreciative if someone could perhaps try to explain a solution to this problem which I could either follow or perhaps give to somone more knowledgable to follow.

Many thanks.

i got this same problem nd i simply restart DNS client (Service)...nd it works

i have the same problem , but after setting MTU=1500 in PC and MTU=1500 in Firewall (SOnicwall). We get no change .
any one can help me
thanks in advance

Hi,

I'm also looking for an answer to the same question.

I have installed Windows XP SP2 on a Dell Optiplex 745, I am unabe to download Windows Updates and even cannot access any microsoft website.

But can access any other website i.e howstuffworks, google, yahoo .... etc..

It is a virus that's giving you the problem.

You can remove it by going to http://safety.live.com

there you find a scanner from Microsoft which will remove it.

ALSO: Take notice to your modem or dsl activity, as it will constantly be sending and receiving info to the source of the infection.

Good Luck, Ed