Windows Weirdness...

JohnK

I have 3 machines running XP pro and one running Win 2000. All 3 machines running XP seem to have some sort of DNS issue that’s not affecting the Win 2000 machine and I have no idea why. All the XP machines fail to update AVG (Free edition), they cant find the update server) and none of them can find the IMDB website but if I attempt to update or access those from the Win 2000 machine I have no problems. All 4 machines are behind the same router & firewall and none of them have any differences in their host files.

If this is some sort of infection it must have gotten in a good while back as one of the XP machines hasn’t even been turned on in 2 months. All the other machines are up to date with patches and the like.

Anyone have any ideas?

seamus

Are they DHCP? Are the DNS server(s) obtained through DHCP?

JohnK

The router acts as a DHCP server and that uses Netsources DNS servers. All the machines are connected through that.

seamus

Shot in the dark:

Take one XP machine.

Go to Start -> Run -> "ipconfig /flushdns" -> OK
Go to Start -> Run -> "net stop SharedAccess" -> OK (Turns off Windows Firewall)

Try accessing one of the errant sites now.

Have you tried using a different browser on the XP machines?

JohnK

seamus wrote:

Shot in the dark:

Take one XP machine.

Go to Start -> Run -> "ipconfig /flushdns" -> OK
Go to Start -> Run -> "net stop SharedAccess" -> OK (Turns off Windows Firewall)

Try accessing one of the errant sites now.

Have you tried using a different browser on the XP machines?

Thanks seamus, I've tried both but still no joy

Its affecting both IE6 and Firefox 1.5 on all XP machines. When I type the address into IE6 I get taken to the MSN search site (http://sea.search.msn.co.uk/dnserror.aspx?FORM=DNSAS&q=www.imdb.com) that says We can't find "www.imdb.com" and typing the address into firefox gives me Firefox can't find the server at www.imdb.com.

I'm also having trouble with sites like amazon. Its able to find the main amazon server but it cant find the images server so I end up with red x's everywhere like in the attached image. Its only happened for the first time yesterday (friday) and everything seemed to be working fine on thursday. I havent installed or changed anything between thursday and friday so I'm completely at a loss

seamus

Very weird. I would suspect spyware, except that you've probably checked that.

Can you ping or nslookup any of the addresses?

JohnK

I am very very confused at this point . One of the XP machines sorted itself out this morning and another has just sorted itself out now. I didnt do anything to the machines, didnt restart them, didnt change any settings, didnt install or un-install anything. It was definatly the DNS servers though as I tried the NSLOOKUP yesterday and for the two XP machines I tried it on I got

C:\Documents and Settings\John>nslookup www.imdb.com
Server:  ns3.leapbroadband.ie
Address:  217.67.140.90

Non-authoritative answer:
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.imdb.com
Served by:
- pdns6.ultradns.co.uk
          204.74.115.1
          imdb.com
- udns1.ultradns.net
          204.69.234.1
          imdb.com
- udns2.ultradns.net
          204.74.101.1
          imdb.com
- pdns3.ultradns.org

          imdb.com
- pdns5.ultradns.info
          204.74.114.1
          imdb.com

I did it again now that its fixed itself and now its saying

C:\Documents and Settings\John>nslookup www.imdb.com
Server:  pepperoni.netsource.ie
Address:  212.17.32.3

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    us.dd.imdb.com
Address:  72.21.210.28
Aliases:  www.imdb.com, us.imdb.com

I suppose I should be happy that its fixed itself but its going to bug the crap out of me that I dont know what happened and why it only effected the XP machines

thanks for your help seamus

John.

JohnK

That stupid ****ing problem is back again! :mad: :mad: :mad: This is almost the same time it happened last week too . Anyone have any ideas how I can fix this? Is it possible to force my machine to look at the Netsource name server?

thanks.

seamus

Yeah, forcing DNS settings is probably your best idea. Go into the Network Connections control panel on the machines, right-click on the LAN connection and select Properties. Highlight "Internet Protocal (TCP/IP)" and click Properties, and set the DNS servers manually.

JohnK

Thanks seamus, I've done that and its working again now .

Wish I knew what was causing it though