"Links Blocked?" Topic

OK my aunt's problem is her Dell computer has lately become very nasty about reacting to both internal and external links. For instance I can't reach GHQ by clicking on their address on the manufacturer's address on the manufacturer's listing or my mother can't get the food channel site to print out a recipe for her.If you try to go to either place, it basically seizess up and does nothing. A hard boot reveals the computer is running and finally when you get tired of nothing happening a "Cancel" input generates a message the program isn't responsive. Next follows the helpful (?) message do you want to report this to Microsoft, which I've frequently done, all to no effect.

I use the same Spybot for cookie deletion as well as Norton Security on my laptop plus keep them up to date on my lap top as on my aunt's computer without any trouble on it.

MY ISP trouble desk suggested the faul lies with Mirosoft.

So anybody got any advice

Could be a memory problem or cache issue. Try clearing cache and clean up some memory to see if this helps.

As in defragging it? I do that about every week or so.

Open a command window (also called a DOS box). It's under Start/Accessories somewhere.

Have a look at the URLs you're trying to reach. They should say "http://sitename/some/other/bits".

Say;

"telnet sitename 80"

It should say "connecting" and will then wait. Say "GET /" and hit return a couple of times. You should get HTML text back (text with some of it in angle brackets).

If that works, but your browser doesn't, it's something with your browser software rather than the internet connections themselves.

"do you want to report this to Microsoft, which I've frequently done, all to no effect."

They get millions of these reports -- I understand they run a statistical analysis of them looking for regularly occurring patterns to find bugs. They just can't respond to all of them individually.

Thanks Katiel and Condotta for pointing me in the right direction. You got me to where I could solve this one and I wouldn't have had clue one without you.

So thanks again and a very happy new year to you both.