IE Problem - Help Required, Please

Pshan

My daughter has a Dell laptop, Win XP and uses the Internet (IE) via a LAN connection on BB.
The problem she is currently having is regardless of what page she requests she gets an error message stating "the page you requested is not available". The connection is shown as ok and she can see other users on MSN.

What can she check to get it working?

Smellyirishman

Click Start --> Run --> type "cmd" --> hit enter.

In the black box that appears, type in "ping www.boards.ie" (or replace boards.ie with whatever sites you cannot access) and tell us what happens. That might give some greater clue.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Sounds like she's having a problem doing DNS lookups.
See if she can open http://82.195.136.250/ in a web browser. (that's Boards.ie's IP address)
If it opens as normal, you'll have to find out why your DNS lookups are failing... my brother had a problem like this with UTV recently, it seems their servers are a bit flakey lately.
You should be able to setup alternate DNS servers in the routers web-interface... you can add/replace the DNS servers listed there with working alternatives.
I found this thread quite informative... I used some of the DNS servers people posted there and got around the problem.
All you have to do is figure out how to access the routers configuration interface (usually something like opening 192.168.1.1 in a webbrowser, but check your ISP documentation if in doubt, or post here what ISP/router she's using and someone will probably be able to tell you), then figure out where to change the DNS servers.

Sounds like this is what the problem is anyway.... other than that, I'd have a look in IE's "Tools/Internet Options/Connections/Lan Settings" for any unwanted Proxy settings.

Pshan

Smellyirishman wrote:

Click Start --> Run --> type "cmd" --> hit enter.

In the black box that appears, type in "ping www.boards.ie" (or replace boards.ie with whatever sites you cannot access) and tell us what happens. That might give some greater clue.

Ok - She tried "pinging RTE.ie" - she seems to have got a lot of data -some of it was........ pinging www.rte.ie ... 32 bits of data...reply from RTE...

.....does this mean anything to you? Where to now?

DonkeyStyle \o/ - She tried the DNS number thing and still has no access, there doesn't seem to be anything unusual on the connections tab.

Thank you both for your replies.
BTW - The ISP is NTL in Scotland

phog

Pshan wrote:

Ok - She tried "pinging RTE.ie" - she seems to have got a lot of data -some of it was........ pinging www.rte.ie ... 32 bits of data...reply from RTE...

.....does this mean anything to you? Where to now?

DonkeyStyle \o/ - She tried the DNS number thing and still has no access, there doesn't seem to be anything unusual on the connections tab.

Thank you both for your replies.
BTW - The ISP is NTL in Scotland

I'm no expert here but my laptop had similar problems and it was the DNS lookups that needed modifying.
Is there any PC Repair shop she could have it checked out or the Dell helpline?

Pshan

Pshan wrote:

My daughter has a Dell laptop, Win XP and uses the Internet (IE) via a LAN connection on BB.
The problem she is currently having is regardless of what page she requests she gets an error message stating "the page you requested is not available". The connection is shown as ok and she can see other users on MSN.

What can she check to get it working?

I'm raising this again - hopefully someone will be able to help. She has tried all of the above but to no avail. She is home at the moment so I hope to sort it out while she's around. I've tried wireless, BB and dial up all the same problem - connects to intranet but pages won't open.

I'm thinking of unistalling IE and re-installing but where can I get a disc as IE usually come pre-loaded.
Any other solutions?

Ruu_Old

Internet Explorer sometimes comes on some of those PC magazines that have trial software on them or an Eircom ISP CD will have Internet Explorer on it most likely.

spurious

Has she tried using another browser, such as Mozilla Firefox?
http://en.www.mozilla.com/en/

GoneShootin

Pshan you will have to give us a better breakdown as to what the "ping" command returned as per what was on the cmd window. You should be able to copy and paste the results, or take a screenshot. I tried pinging rte.ie. I was able to get the IP address, which proves my DNS is correct. You only gave us the first line back.

Try these these steps as per what DonkeyStyle suggested and check to see if your settings are something like in the following images:

DaSilva

Have you got a firewall running on that pc that could for some odd reason be blocking internet explorer, or port 80.

Does internet explorer say "[working offline]" in the title bar? If so do this, click the File menu, and unselect "Working offline" option.