Cannot reach one specific website

[Jaydon]

The website homepage is allpar.com (a Chrysler car website), which I can reach. The problem is, when I try to go to the forums, I get the error page like "webpage unavailable" and at the bottom it says "cannot find server or dns error". I've tried everything, including contacting the website and my ISP, numerous times. I have a new external modem, Zoom 3049, a stand-alone type. My computer is old, a '96 Dell w/ 166 MgH processor, but with a stand-alone modem, that shouldn't matter. The problem used to be sporadic, like day to day, but now it's been like 4 days or more. I can see some pages, so I know other folks are using the forums, but I can't read the posts or go further than that.

By the way, who exactly is the "server"?

[EzyStvy]

Works for me:

http://www.allpar.com/i/forums.html


We require valid addresses as well as registration (or setting up a profile) for posting in the forums. You can browse, but not post, until you register. Both registration and profiles require you to enter a valid e-mail address; the system will e-mail your password to you. Note that most failures are caused by people sending the passwords to a badly spelled or over-full "garbage" account. We won't spam you - so far we've sent a huge ONE message to our members. Use your real e-mail address. Otherwise, you can't log in and post.

[Jaydon]

I can post in the forums, once I get there. From the homepage I click on "forums and tech help", then click on the specific forum I want, EEK for me most of the time. I then reach the EEK forum. When I click on a topic, that is where everything stalls for me. If I can get past that, I'm home-free.

My email address is from hotmail, could that be the problem? I know I can't email allpar from there unless I put the word "Pathmark" in the subject box after the subject. So maybe if I change that to my Outlook Express address, I might do better?

[gbirke]

Try cleaning your cookies and temporary internet files. Are you using an older version of IE, if so you may have to update. Are you using any pop up killers? I have problems every once in a while where I have to disable my pop up killer. By the way thanks, I own two Chryslers, nice site.

[Jaydon]

Uh, I cleaned out my cookies not too long ago, maybe I'll try again. My temp internet files I clean out with disk cleanup utility. I have no popup killers. I use IE 5.5. I got 5.5 from my ISP, and it caused me some problems downloading it from their CD, so I'm a bit wary of updating to IE 6.

My most re-occurring problem is having to reinstall Windows 98 because of lost files. I've done this quite often in the 4 yrs. I've owned this computer, like once or twice a year. So I just recently did that before the problem with allpar. Hard to say if they're related, though, because I did get on once, and because I had just re-installed Windows, I was not logged on. So I logged on, and kept it that way, like I usually do. I thought about logging off from now on, see if that helps.

By the way, I was able to get on yesterday after I posted here, and shortly after I went here to see if I had gotten any replies, and EzyStvy had replied. Then I noticed I had gotten an email notification about it and wondered if that was what enabled me to enter the forums, like a validation of my email address?

[Jaydon]

Attention: I just deleted all my cookies, and I mean ALL of them. I did a search under "find" for "cookies" and "temporary internet files" and deleted everything that they allowed me to and that did not come with a warning.

So then I tried to reach allpar, and I could not even reach the homepage. I'm asking someone here to write a reply so it will get sent to my email address, and then maybe I will be able to access allpar.

Or maybe someone could email me from allpar.

I'm not worried about it, though, just curious.

[glc]

You might want to check your hosts file. Your e-mail concerns should have nothing to do with this problem at all.

Search for "hosts" (NO extension - "hosts.sam" is a sample file), open it in Notepad or Wordpad, and look for lines that do not have a # in front of them. The only one should contain 127.0.0.1 and a reference to "localhost". If you have others, put a # in front of them, save, and try again. Something you installed may have modified the hosts file - web accelerators and search "enhancers" are notorious for doing this.

Who is your ISP? If you installed THEIR browser, the odds are pretty good it's monkeyed with your hosts or proxy settings somehow.

If you are using an external modem, you need to go into Device Manager and change the default settings on the com port - change them to 115200, 8, none, 1, hardware.

[Jaydon]

Everything is already as you say. I don't think I'm using a proxy server. I thought of it, but don't know what data to put in. My ISP, Enter.Net from Allentown, PA, a local ISP right down the road from my house, gave me primary and secondary DNS #'s to insert, and like I said, IE 5.5 came off their CD.

Thanks for all the replies so far. The funny thing is, allpar is the only sight I have this problem with, and it is only in the forums, not on the site as a whole.

[azscary]

If you are running IE 5.5 you may want to go to the MS site and update the browser.

[glc]

IE 5.5 is fine, and as a matter of fact the latest you can run on Win95 - and I recommend you stay with it on Win98 as IE6 can cause all kinds of goofy issues. If anything, revert *backwards* to IE 5.01.

You could try Opera, Mozilla, or Firebird - I'm sure there are other alternative browsers out there that aren't just a shell with the IE engine.

[Jaydon]

Thanks for all the replies. I think I've hit on a solution, don't know if it's permanent, but it seems to be working so far.

A guy at work talked to me about this. He asked me how much ram I have, I said 32 MB, he said that's your problem. Today's new computers have 128, 256, 512. So I figured out I could disable some items in my start-up menu that I do not need, such as realplayer, quicktime, aim, msnmessenger, and now my windows load time is almost instantaneous. Once my desktop appears, loading is finished in less than 5 seconds. So far I have been able to access the website in question.

Thanks again. Tell me if this makes sense.

[glc]

Now, go get yourself a RAM upgrade if you can find one, that's proprietary memory.