Odd Page Cannot Be Displayed Problem (All browsers, not just IE)

[Supreme Ox]

I work the phones at an ISP. We’ve been getting lots of calls over the past couple of months or so where people are able to connect, but after 10 – 15 minutes they start getting "Page Cannot Be Displayed" errors when trying to access any web sites. They are still connected to the Internet and are still able to send and receive mail. I have had them go into DOS and ping various web sites and they get a reply (both by IP address & name). I have them try to go to the web site directly by the IP address that ping returns, and that doesn’t work either. I will even ping the web site from my PC and have them put in the numbers I get back and it still doesn’t work. I plug in the IP address on my PC and it works fine. They reboot their computers and are able to connect for another 10 – 15 minutes then the problem repeats. This happens whether they are connected through dialup or DSL. It doesn’t matter what browser they’re using, and they all are running Windows XP (so far) with all the updates installed. So far there have been 20 or 30 people with this problem.

I've asked and they have virus scan, all up to date. No firewalls are installed (most of the time, anyway) and I've tried turning off the Windows XP firewall also. I also had them install Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware and the systems come up clean

Has anyone else been experiencing this or have any suggestions? We’re all baffled here. Our techs assure me that it's nothing on our end, which makes sense to me because we have over 2000 clients who AREN'T calling in.

Thanks.

[i686-linux]

I'm not sure what would be causing the problem, but it would be interesting to see what other protcols this intercepts. POP/SMTP seem to be fine. Can you have these people try accessing an https:// site, or even an ftp://

[caperjack]

i would get them to run one of the free online virus scans like the ones in my signature ,i do believe its trojan/malware releated .

[aeinstein]

rename the "hosts" file in the i386 folder (i.e., hosts.old or hosts_043004 or whatever); the OS will create a new cache "hosts" file automatically.

[Supreme Ox]

I had a user try going to ftp://ftp.norton.com and https://www.paypal.com and it worked. But still no luck with http://. I had this same user rename the "hosts" file and that didn't help either.

And the plot thickens...

I just got an email from a customer stating that he put the computer he had with us on dialup on a cable modem with another carrier and the problem went away. Our tech continues to insist that it isn't us, and I don't see how it can be, but this is just too weird. Why would some (but not all) WinXP machines stop working when connected to us, and yet this guy is able to connect through another ISP??? And why would rebooting help??? And why for only 10-15 minutes??? And here's another new and odd thing: they can browse OUR web site all they want, including odd pages for agents and such that I know aren't cached in their computers.

[aeinstein]

obviously i dont know how your network is setup, but have your it ppl tried clearing the arp cache of the respective server/router/ubr(s)?...

...after re-reading your posts a couple of times to try and get a better grasp on the situaion i'm not hopeful clearing arp cache on an intermittent connectivity issue is going to clear the issue (although it is something to be done if only to cross it off of the list of possible solutions; strange things can happen w/tcp/ip). it almost seems like an ip conflict, but the duration of connectivity is too long...

[aeinstein]

what has been done to foot-print the issue? the who's, when's, what's...? for a moment i thought it might be a cable/dsl modem firmware issue, but the dial-up scenarios preclude that (in all likelihood any arp cache issues as well). also, theyre obviously using different hardware dial-up v. c/dsl modem, so the prospect of a hardware fault drops to a low probability. if i'm not mistaken, and i quite well may be, i think winxp rebuilds the tcp/ip stack on reboot, which could go a long way towards explaining the issue. since it's happening to a number of systems the best avenue of attack, imo, is to identify commonalities amongst the systems/access patterns of the end-users (e-u's). are these ppl running specialized, or private use, s/w that other winxp e-u's arent? are they jumping off of the same link/page/site? are they connecting to the same respective network presences (dial-up & c/dsl)? same time of day? is it possibly a server-side rather than client side issue propogating a corruption/conflict to these e-u's? ....

[Dave318]

I will offer up what worked for me. I was getting the problem anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes after starting explorer. It especially occurred after hitting a 'complex' site.

After several months of this, and with no luck in finding a solution, I reviewed what had changed. The only thing had been the loading of anti spam software from Symantec. I unloaded the software and, voila, the problem disappeared. (plus speed was much better)

I suggest anyone else with the same type of problem look at what 'monitoring' type software has recently be loaded and start from there.

Hope this helps.

[SpiceLMF]

I'm having a similar problem at my univeristy. I decided to reformat my computer due to unrelated reasons. Yet once everything was back up, since my computer was essentially open to the elements, some worms were placed on my computer which could only be from being connected to the college network. Well i ran anti-virus.. did a spyware and adware search and cleaned it all off.. This resolved a good amount of my problems. Now I did a lot of the windows updates.. upon doing sp1 and a bunch of others I get the issue where after 15-30 min I can no longer go to websites. Now i'll still be connected to AIM and the apache server I have on my comp will still be running fine.

I then installed sp2 and the problem is worse.. within seconds I can't get onto websites. Now my computer has been loading stuff on startup extremely slowly. Also whenever I open the first instance of IE it will start to load my homepage then go to a different website I can't remember the exact address (i'm on my home computer) but i know it's a long complicated word with an A and the html file is named medi.html. I looked up this website and couldn't find anything about it being harmful.

I'll try the suggested things when I get back to school.. but this is quite an annoying problem.. i'm pretty good with computers and have tried various things but am not sure how this can be resolved. Anyone else have new ideas?

Oh yeah.. and i'm connecting through the cable network.

[dlh6213]

Supreme Ox, have you asked any of these users if they have upgraded to SP2? If so, did they have the problem before that or did it start afterwards? It's possible this may have something to do with it.

[kawaipuna]

I work the phones at an ISP. We’ve been getting lots of calls over the past couple of months or so where people are able to connect, but after 10 – 15 minutes they start getting "Page Cannot Be Displayed" errors when trying to access any web sites. They are still connected to the Internet and are still able to send and receive mail. I have had them go into DOS and ping various web sites and they get a reply (both by IP address & name). I have them try to go to the web site directly by the IP address that ping returns, and that doesn’t work either. I will even ping the web site from my PC and have them put in the numbers I get back and it still doesn’t work. I plug in the IP address on my PC and it works fine. They reboot their computers and are able to connect for another 10 – 15 minutes then the problem repeats. This happens whether they are connected through dialup or DSL. It doesn’t matter what browser they’re using, and they all are running Windows XP (so far) with all the updates installed. So far there have been 20 or 30 people with this problem.

I've asked and they have virus scan, all up to date. No firewalls are installed (most of the time, anyway) and I've tried turning off the Windows XP firewall also. I also had them install Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware and the systems come up clean

Has anyone else been experiencing this or have any suggestions? We’re all baffled here. Our techs assure me that it's nothing on our end, which makes sense to me because we have over 2000 clients who AREN'T calling in.

Thanks.

I have been watching for responses to this email as I have the exact same p roblem and it is extremely frusrating to say the least.

[abbasmj]

If you are using a Wireless connection and the connection keeps dropping then do the following.

1. First of all make sure that you disable the power management feature.
2. Goto the properties of the Wireless Network Connection -> Click on the Wireless Network Tab -> Click on the Advance button -> Select Access Point Infrastructure networks only and then click on OK

Now see whether this works or not.

[anarki2k3]

Right I'm having the same trouble. Now I have recently (two days) done a completely clean install of XP Pro SP2, I've installed all of the updates (a cautionary matter) and everything was fine. I have since installed CA Antivirus, Spybot S&D, Windows Live Messenger, IE7, Firefox, MS Office, uTorrent, Paintshop Pro XI and Age of Empires. I've recorded all of the changes that have been made and which websites have been visited (I'm not the only user). There have been no malicious installs or changes made to the machine that I have been able to isolate. The antivirus hasn't picked up anything and Spybot also hasn't and the Spybot resident hasn't picked up any malicious registry changes.

I also forgot to say that sometimes when I type in an address it changes said address to http:/// and displays "This page cannot be displayed." The wierd thing is that it does that almost instantly. As if it's not even trying to connect to the site itself.

This has only been a recent problem though. The PC has been fine for years before this. With practically the same software installed. Changing browsers makes no difference, if it's happening in IE then FF won't even load anything.

Sorry for the triple post. The second was because I forgot, the third was because the return key was prematurely pressed.

[KDMiller]

I have the same problem on only one computer. It is a Lenovo T61. The user was running McAfee Security Center when he updated to IE 7 then loaded SP3. He may have had a couple of security updates after that. After re-boot the computer is able to access any web site for approx. 7-10 minutes then it returns "page cannot be displayed" message. This is only for http: request. Ping, tracert, ftp, https all work fine. From the research I have done browsing the NGs I think there is a combination effect with these updates and the third party security software. I have uninstalled the McAfee program with no effect. I hope someone smarter than I can find a fix for this "PITA" problem soon.