With people visiting for the holidays, there are by my count six computers currently in my house, all connected to the same wireless network. One of them and only one is unable to access a specific site, and only this site.
(The site happens to be Facebook, but I don't know if that matters.)
All five other computers can get to Facebook no trouble and my computer can get to any other site with no trouble, but every attempt to access Facebook results in a "Can't find server" error.
This is in Firefox 3.6, but Internet Explorer (which I started for the first time in months just to check) is the same.
I have deleted all of my cookies and cache, created a new Firefox profile, deleted my hosts file in system32 to let Windows generate a new one, rebooted my computer, disconnected from and reconnected to the wireless network repeatedly, cycled my cable modem and router, and tried multiple different proxy settings in Firefox (auto-detect, no proxy, etc). No joy.
However, if I start a VPN on the computer with
HotSpot Shield, Facebook comes up with no problem.
I'm sure that probably means there is a relatively simple explanation and solution to this problem. I would really appreciate it if somebody could let me know what it is, because this is getting fairly infuriating.
Thanks.
Posts
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
Thanks for the suggestions anyway, I'll refer back to this thread if it starts happening again.
Edit: Crap, it's started again. Tried pinging facebook, says "could not find host www.facebook.com." Flushed the DNS cache, didn't make any difference. Screw this, I'm going to bed, will deal with it in the light of a new year.
Here is what my problem was and quick fixes I first tried
Facebook won't load at all.
Cookies/Cache was cleared
Spyware/Virus scanners found nothing
Facebook will load on other computers in my house, but not my main one.
Firewall was checked, along with any sites being blocked from the router
If like me, you tried those things and it still doesn't work, then I have the solution!
After spending a couple hours, I finally figured it out. Then right after, I find a somewhat similiar solution, but much harder to do. So here's the easy way.
What happened is, some malicous software changed the hosts file. The host file is what your internet runs through before going into your PC. So anything blocked here, will just act like it can't load.
Download Hostsman. This is a completely free program. You can get it at the link below.
http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman
After installing it, launch it, then click on "Hosts" then "Scan Host Files.."
Click on Hijacks.
There you will see that facebook.com and www.facebook.com is set on ignore in the hosts file.
Normally you can just delete it from there, but for me it said another process was using it. So here's how I got past that. (process hide from the task manager)
Right click on it, and select "Edit." Now just type in a random IP, I used 1.1.1.1
Now click fix, then go back to "Scan Host Files.."
You will now see that the IP it is blocking has changed. Since you changed the IP, you are now able to just right-click on it, and delete.
Your facebook should be working now.
Hope this helps!