[Viren]

I am facing the same problem since last 20 days that Tomdrayson faced. Fortunately for him, the problem got solved on its own, but not for me.

20 days back I loaded Windows XP SP2 for the first time over my Windows 98 OS. As by default Windows XP has Automatic updates ON, it successfully connected to windowsupdate.microsoft.com and updated my system. I am using ADSL router from VSNL (Tata Indicom). Everything worked fine for the day and I was able to access my personal email-id on hotmail.com too. Switched off the PC (Pentium 4 with 845G intel chipset) for the day.

The next day when I tried to access hotmail.com or microsoft.com. it would give the message "web site found, waiting for reply" at the bottom left corner and after 2 minutes give the message "Page cannot be displayed".

So I finally removed the partitions on my 40 GB hard disk, installed new partitions with different sizes, formatted them and installed Windows 98SE back. Did not install any anti-virus or firewall or any other software except Internet Explorer 6. Still cannot access microsoft.com or hotmail.com. Any other site is no problem at all.

Tried using Netscape 6.1 and Netscape 8.0 browsers too, but no change.

Is it that microsoft records my motherboard/hard disk serial nos. and then blocks ?

I am able to access the same sites from my other PC which has a direct cable connection. I was also successful in accessing the same sites from a friend's PC.

I tried all the solutions mentioned in tomdrayson's topic, but without success.

Will appreciate any help for this strange occurrance.

Thanks

Edited by Viren, 05 November 2006 - 11:29 PM.