Monday, July 02, 2007

PC Woes

I've been having some problems with my broadband for the past few weeks- the connection remains but while some programs continue to download from the internet, my browser would simply refuse to load pages. I would try to refresh my wireless connection to the router but often times this had no effect. Shutting down and restarting seemed to be the main way to get around it- either the router itself or my PC. A huge, big nuisance.

Anyway, I figured out that the problem lies with the machine's DNS. Bringing up a cmd screen I could ping websites via their IP address but not via their actual name. Flushing the DNS cache would, 8 times out of 10, solve the problem.

Well, this morning I spent more time trying to get a working connection than I actually did doing any reading so I downloaded a little program called WinsockXPFix, backed up my system, and ran it. Thus far it seems to have resolved the problem.

If you hear a scream today that sounds like a soul tormented you'll know that the fix has only been temporary.

2 comments:

Bag said...

You could set up your DNS servers to point to a more reliable system or even host your own if it continues.

Not something you want to do if you don't have to.

Jay.Mac said...

Thanks for the tip- the winsock utility seems to have done the trick. No problems so far and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it carries on like this!