To my fellow researchers:

Good Day,

Can't find anything on this: I get an IP, I can ping domain names, but the
web browser doesn't connect at all:

Proxy settings are off
Tried Netscape and Opera. IE gets MOST web sites, while some just won't
connect (pinging works fine).

Reinstalled Winsock2, all my network devices, tried a different NIC,
repeated over and over to no avail.

Using Win98 (first edition), a D-Link USB and also tried internal D-Link
530TX.

AMD K6 - 300 Mhz system.

Tried DSL and Cable internet. Both produce the same results. DHCP on both.

Anyone know what the heck could be wrong?

Good tip for a quick solution.  Need an answer before Sunday!

slawek-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 21 Jun 2003 09:10 PDT

You mentioned both DSL and cable. Does this mean you have tried
different Internet service providers? If both services are only of one
company, have you called that company to see if there is a problem on
their end? Also, have you checked your TCP/IP properties in the
Network Neighborhood to see if your Gateway or DNS settings match that
of the ISP? Well, after these are ruled out, let's see where else it
could have gone wrong.

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Clarification of Question by slawek-ga on 21 Jun 2003 09:18 PDT

Yes, I tried two different Internt providers, with exact same problems
happening using either.  This leads me to believe that this is a local
problem.

DNS and gateway are acquired automatically.  They are not defined, and
everything worked fine like this until Thursday...  I reinstalled
TCP/IP, the NIC, removed Connectivity in Add/Remove Programs (Windows
Software Tab), Killed Winsock2 (am going to try killing both Winsock
and Winsock2 right now... one place I found on the net suggests
killing both...).  And than reinstall Connectivity again... see what
that does (not holding my breath though).

What else could be wrong?  The next thing I would like to try is
putting a different HD into that machine, and setting up win on it,
see if it works.  This would ensure that there is no hardware
problems... however, I do not have access to an extra HD. :(

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Clarification of Question by slawek-ga on 21 Jun 2003 10:32 PDT

... reformating the HD is an option I am aware of, but the answer
should not include that option.  If there is anything anyone can
suggest to fix this without a OS reinstall, I will be happy to pay the
money, and $10 tip! :)

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 22 Jun 2003 00:29 PDT

I doubt you may need to reformat your HD. It may kill the problem
entirely if it's software-related ;), but let's not count out a
hardware problem. Do you have cables that lead to whatever Internet
inlet device you have there? Perhaps there's a problem with that
cable. Maybe you just have registry errors too and you may only need
to clean up your registry. Maybe you have to change something in the
Primary Network Logon and it's properties, though that's less likely.

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Clarification of Question by slawek-ga on 22 Jun 2003 10:24 PDT

Hi techtor-ga,

I tried connecting at two locations across town, with two different
ISPs.  Exact same problems.  This means I used two sets of cabling...
and than I tried a USB external Ethernet device rather than the
internal NIC (which I disabled).  This means I tried two different
NIC, two sets of cable, two locations, two ISPs with two different
modems... removed communications in windows setup (under add remove
programs), and than deleted the Winsock2, Winsock, and AFVXD, DHCP,
MSTCP, WINSOCK, and WINSOCK2 inside the VXD under services... renamed
winsock.dll to something else, made sure it reinstalled)... Removed IE
by force, since that is the only browser that has at least partial
Internet Access... For a while the Internal NIC was ghosting, and I
thought that was the problem, but since I solved that problem without
any improvements to the original problem.  My last hope is to
reinstall and remove the Norton Internet Security as suggested by
omnivorous-ga... Maybe that is doing it's own thing, and denying
access... Do you have any other ideas as to what I could try?  If so
please post them, and if they work, you can post an official
response...

See my next clarification for a new update on something else I
noticed.

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Clarification of Question by slawek-ga on 22 Jun 2003 10:27 PDT

Please feel free to respond to this question... the dead line has been
extended until further notice. :)

New info:

I tried going to hotmail.com, and creating a new account.  I did that
with IE, since that is the only broswer that allows at least partial
access to the web.  When I tried selecting country in the drop down
menu on the hotmail "new account form", the browser actually tries
submitting the form.  As soon as I select a country, the browser tells
me about that being an insecure connection (or some other standard
popup), and when I click click proceed, I get a page not found error
(looks like it is trying to find the hotmail reponse page to the
completed and submitted form)... It looks like something is really
messed up... :(

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 23 Jun 2003 04:01 PDT

Is this next problem you encountered happening when using the same
computer you had problems with initially in this question? That sure
is a lot of weird stuff you're experiencing... Since your browser is
warning you about a non-secure site, probably your internet security
settings are too high... you could lower them a bit. Or there are
other Internet Options settings you could change in the Advanced tab.

By the way, if you want to do a reinstall of Windows, just overinstall
without deleting anything. It should recognize all the old software
you installed. If it doesn't, then there's something wrong probably in
the format or partition, or boot sector... Scandisk it or Norton Disk
Doctor it before reinstalling to be sure.

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Clarification of Question by slawek-ga on 23 Jun 2003 07:20 PDT

Hi techtor-ga,

Thanks for your response.  Yes, the problems are with the same
computer.  I've never seen anything like it.  The only "recorded"
possible reason I can find is that windows got corrupt.  I did
everything else, and nothing solved it (reading online and my own
experience).  Everything else online says that if you have done all
this, and it still doesn't work, chances are your windows is corrupt. 
Yikes.

I just talked to the client, and they mentioned that the problems
started when they upgraded/renewed their norton subscription for
another year.  I am really hopefull that the removal and reinstall of
norton will fix things (allthough I will be trying everything without
Norton on the system before I reinstall it).

I have put all security setting to default as one of my first efforts
to get the thing going... deleted all the cookies, and stuff.  It
fixed some problems (one of them being that a lot of web addressed
when typed in, would change to www.yahoo.com when enter was hit,
taking me there instead of the typed address).

All my subnet masks are empty... I don't know if this is the case
everywhere, but the I-Net access here is pretty simple to setup. 
Draws all settings on it's own.  Plug it in, renew IP or reboot, and
you're online.  I did Internet installs for the company for about half
a year (services about 1300 customers), so I know a thing or two about
these things... still no go.  :(

If the Norton reinstall does not work, I will have to tell the client
that all I can do now is reinstall win.  I don't think I will be to
reinstall over, because I doubt that will solve the problem. :(  I
might try it as a first step after backing everything up... Just for
the heck of it... It could save me some time!  And let me tell you,
I've put in a lot of time into this one. :)

The customer has not defrage the HD in 740 days when I first looked at
it... who knows what got messed up during all that time...

Regards,
slawek-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 23 Jun 2003 08:56 PDT

Yeah, let's hope the refurbishing of the Norton Internet Security
software will do the trick. I'll cross my fingers with you. :)

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Request for Question Clarification by feilong-ga on 25 Jun 2003 06:14 PDT

Hi Slawek,

I use Norton and I've encountered that similar problem with NAV. When
doing your Norton reinstall, make sure that after you uninstall and
reboot, remove/delete the original installation folder in Program
Files. You will also need to clean all the registry entries of Norton
and make sure that there are no related entries in the startup. If you
can clean the registry manually then well and good. If you can't, you
can use a registry cleaner such as RegCleaner.

If you plan to do an overinstall of Win98, it would be better if you
use SE. That way, you wouldn't have to update the OS. After
overinstalling, make sure to update IE to the latest version and also
DirectX. From my experience, I would advice not to use DX9. It causes
weird behavior and performance. DX8.1 is just fine. After this
overinstall process, you can proceed on reinstalling Norton.

Regards,
Feilong

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Request for Question Clarification by feilong-ga on 25 Jun 2003 06:19 PDT

I just remembered, you still have another option to save you time. Try
to know when the client upgraded Norton. You will only need to reboot
to dos mode and type 'scanreg'. You then have to simply restore a
backup dated PRIOR to the time when the client upgraded Norton. But
before you do that, make sure that the files and programs are intact,
i.e. you have not uninstalled Norton yet.

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Clarification of Question by slawek-ga on 25 Jun 2003 11:17 PDT

Good Day everyone,

Thanks to the original suggestion made by omnivorous-ga, the problem
is solved.
His original thought tipped me off in the right direction, and since
Feilong has elaborated on the possibility of Norton being the culprit.
 This was the case.

20 hours later, and a tad bit smarter, with a satisfied client, I'm a
happy camper.  Omnivorous, please post an official answer.  Feilong,
thank you for elaborating.  Thanks to EVERYONE who put in their
thoughts.  I really appreciate it.  I did not feel alone on the
problem...

For the record, I dumped Norton out the window.  The client was
upgrading it, and that is when the problems started (wish I had that
info when I started!).  They are now using Zone Alarm with AVG from
grisoft.com.  They have everything they need, an will not need to
renew in a year.  I am not sure if they messed something up with
Norton, or if the machine simply did not like it.  Either way, I
suggested to the client to leave Norton aside, and use the other free
software.  A suggestion they followed in fear of experiencing the same
problem.


Cheers to all fellow researchers!

Slawek

Do you have any firewall software like Zone Alarm installed?

Norton Internet Security is installed but disabled.
Just tried removing it, but it looks like it didn't install right and
will need to be reinstalled.  I won't be able to do that till monday. 
If I get nothing else, I will try reinstalling it at the client's and
than removing it.  If this solves the problem, I will confirm so you
can post an official reply.  Did not think of this one... I guess
something could have really messed up in Norton, and it denies access
to most things (how it does it based on web sites, I dunno, but
windows is pretty weird that way :).  Thanks for the idea.

Slawek --

Check your subnet mask (in network neighborhood) to make sure that
it's proper for your ISP as well.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Hi Slawek,

I do believe that I personally experienced this exact problem last
week.

I have a PC running Windows 2000 hooked up to the net via a cable
modem. It also has a second network card which connects it to an
internal network. This machine sits on my window sill with no monitor,
keyboard or mouse and simply acts as a hardware router.

Suddenly I found that I could only access about half the sites I
tried, from any PC. Some sites, like Google were fine; while others
like BBC News or my own site were entirely inaccessible.

I had a definite internet connection because I could see some sites.
The sites that I couldn't access were definitely live because I
checked elsewhere. I could even ping the sites by name and get a
correct response. However no browser (I tried a few) would load them.

Once a day or so everything would return fine but then disappear in an
hour or two. Always it was the same sites that I couldn't access. I
checked from all machines on my network and from the PC that was
physically attached to the cable modem but all returned the same
problem.

I liaised with my ISP but got nowhere. I then physically unplugged the
PC attached to the cable modem and replaced it with another one, also
running Windows 2000, and only moved across the network card as its
MAC address is registered with my ISP. Everything worked fine.

While I am a systems administrator I do not pretend to understand what
had gone wrong. However I successfully narrowed the problem down to
being with the software on the PC physically attached to the net and
replacing it solved the problem.

I realise that this is not great news to you but I hope that it helps.

Poe