Unable to access ONE website

A friend of mine has a curious problem with a fairly new machine.

Using Internet Explorer he's unable to get at the web site www.collectorcartraderonline.com although they were once able to!

For about a week since the machine was set up (in early June) he could get on the site and since that time, it doesn't look as if anything particular has been loaded onto the machine. No new fixes or anything of that nature.

I've checked things like Java being installed and it looks OK. I've restored the system to earlier times (like when we believe it WAS able to connect to the site) but no joy.

I've looked through the various patches which have been applied but the only one which seemed connected in any way was Q831167 so I tried removing it but to no avail.

I've tried with different browsers (firefox and Netscape) and all produce the same result... it says it can't find the site.

It's not being misspelled. I tried getting at it via a link on another site (www.classiccarslasvegas.com) but still no joy.

I've looked through security and similar settings and have run out of ideas.

It's the only site that we can find that shows this problem and using http://www.dnsstuff.com/ I am able to ping it and traceroute it.

Has anybody got any ideas? Has anyone seen anything like this before? What is so special about this one site?

Oh yes, the environment is XPhome running IE6.

On his PC search Google using the full URL http://www.collectorcartraderonline.com/

Check to see if IE is in "Work Offline" mode thought I doubt it since you tried different browsers. His ISP may be blocking the site and a phone call to them will see if that is the case. His firewall if any may be blocking it as well.

It is certainly online since we can get at every other site OK.

I should have mentioned that there IS a firewall in place (Zone Alarm) but turning it off doesn't help. Also, I have no trouble getting at the site from my machine.

I notice that when I do go to the site and try to 'view source', there is nothing shown. Perhaps that's a clue?

Ken, I mean that IE might have that specific site in "Work Offline" mode. In IE click File and you will see "Work Offline" in the drop-down window. If it is a checkmarked the deselect it. Let me know. We may have to edit a host file in your registry.

I may get busy later and will be unable to follow up with editing or creating a host file, so here is a good link to create your own. Now you do not need to spend money on a firewall :)

http://www.accs-net.com/hosts/how_to_use_hosts.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MSNwar

His ISP may be blocking the site...

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This reminds me of a site which dosen't allow ISPs to cache it. ISPs cache sites in order to reduce download times.

download firefox browser, 2.5mg

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

if it does not work on firefox it may be a problem with your isp


god luck

egghead

He said it doesn't work with Firefox and Netscape so it's probably ISP related.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Conan

He said it doesn't work with Firefox and Netscape so it's probably ISP related.

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thanks

i did look for that but missed it :(

see it now :(

hehe

it looks like it is isp related

you can confirm this by asking your friend for the isp username and password and configuring your computer for that account

see if it works

nice website

some cars there i would love to have

had this same thing with techzonez on wed and me and david couldnt figure it out for the life of us. finally I got it fixed by going to the cmd prompt and flushing the dns using IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS and also rebooting my router. not sure which one did it or if it was a combination but here I am.

here is the homepage in html

might help you figure it out

Right, there's a lot of things to answer here...

from MSNwar, "I mean that IE might have that specific site in "Work Offline" mode"

but AIUI work offline applies to the browser and not to specific sites.

WRT the hosts file (not a registry entry BTW) it is possible that an entry in there could be blocking the site but later tests (see below) suggest that this is not the case.

from joshiao, "This reminds me of a site which dosen't allow ISPs to cache it"

I think from the way the site behaves and the fact there is nothing much in my IE cache about it, it almost certainly does not allow cacheing - but that shouldn't stop access to the site.

from egghead, "you can confirm this by asking your friend for the isp username and password and configuring your computer for that account"

That would certainly be an interesting experiment. If I can get it to fail on my machine it should be a lot easier to track down!

from phishead, "had this same thing with techzonez...flushing the dns..."

But the DNS entries shouldn't have stopped access to the site using an IP address. Still it's something else to try.



We've now tried connecting using a different ISP and he is now able to access the site, although it doesn't work properly! When he clicked on any car (tried various images) to view the photographs the page closes down and takes him back to the desktop!

Still, that suggests that it was ISP related and the hosts file and DNS entries are probably OK.



Keep those ideas coming! Why should clicking on an image cause it to fail?

Odd site. Just looked at it and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see "two" home pages! The source code is normal enough though they are checking your browser version. Some sites do that. Odd site.

EDIT: Would the machine happen to be running atguard or Norton personal firewall? http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/M....aspx?id=30678

ANOTHER EDIT: Does the anti-virus software detect JS.Scob.Trojan? This was the trojan from the Russian web site that cause all the problems for IE and its users last month. Also kbb.com, the Internet address of the Kelley Blue Book automobile pricing guide was infected and anyone who visted the site could have been infected. No warnings are given!

This from a security website:
If you visited an affected page, and your BROWSER is compromised:

* You may see a warning about a javascript error. But it depends on how the attack code interfers with other javascript on the respective page, and many users disable these javascript warnings.
* Disconnect the system from the network as soon as possible.
* run a thorough virus check with up to date virus definitions. Many AV vendors released new definitions as recently as last night.
* If you are able to monitor traffic to the infected host, you may see attempts to contact 217.107.218.147 on port 80.
* AV software will detect the javascript as 'JS.Scob.Trojan'.

Well some interesting thoughts there.

As you say, it is an 'unusual' site!

It's not running atguard or Norton PF; it is running AVG antivirus and ZoneAlarm but as I think I mentioned, turning off the firewall didn't help.

WRT the 'JS.Scob.Trojan', I'll investigate this further but the problem did start happening before this trojan was first announced.

It's interesting that kbb.com was infected... I must find out if that site means anything to him!

Thanks for the ideas. This is a most perplexing and unusual problem!

OK, here is all the information that I can glean...

searching the registry, there don't seem to be any entries in places they shouldn't be. The site can be found in ...\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs and in ...\Explorer\RunMRU.

When he tries to connect to the site using LineOne ISP if produces 'site not found'. When I do it I get the same result.

When he tries to connect to the site using ClaraNET ISP or UKlinux ISP, he gets at the site OK but if he tries to view an image, the browser shuts down. This is the same with Internet Explorer or with Firefox.

When I run that test, I find no problem.

When he tries to connect to the site using LineOne ISP but via an anonymous proxy server (proxify), he again can get at the site, although it is not fully functional due to the limitations of the proxy. He can, however, view the pictures in this mode without problems.

So we seem to have two problems...

1. It looks as though there is some problem with LineOne ISP being able to get at that particular site.

2. There is something strange about him viewing images on the site. The pages holding the images are simply html pages, though with heavy use of JavaScript.

So where do I go from here?