[Kellam]

I have a home network of 4 PCs, each connected via Enet to a D-Link Wireless Router (4 E-net ports, wireless unused) then to a D-Link Fast Ethernet Switch which connects to Verizon FIOS DSL interface. The machine that is giving me trouble is an eMachines T5212 with 2GB RAM.

Okay, all that said. the problem is that two days ago all of the browsers on this machine (Firefox (default), IE, Opera, & Safari) reported that they could not connect to any destination sites. E-mail client (Eudora) still works and FTP works from that machine. I've tried a system restore from three days ago (known working then) - same problem; backed out that restore. Tried pinging - all looks normal. Tried ipconfig /reset - no change. Tried bouncing the power to all units (off for one hour) - same problem. Tried reconnecting directly to switch - no change. Only clue is IE reported an HTTP error 12029 (?) a couple of times shortly after problem started. Failure responses come up immediately from browsers - no apparent time-outs.

Looks to me like something in HTTP part of the stack is broke or misconfigured. Any ideas?

Dave in Plano Texas

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After logging all of the results of my investigations, I began looking for anything that did not look right or seemed unusual (like the Secret Service - looking for the guy that seems out of place). I noticed that the Norton 360 logo was not in the task bar. Since Norton is known to take unexplained holidays this had not captured my attention before. I found that I could not open the Norton 360 control panel from the Start menu so I decided to re-install the thing. After a little over an hour of babysitting the install process, Norton seemed to have reinstalled and done enough scanning to be happy. I cranked up Firefox and linked into my home page with no problem.

I have no idea if Norton had just gotten wrapped around the axle and took the HTTP function with it or if, during the install it had found something and fixed it. As always, when magic happens around computers, I'm concerned because this just reinforces superstitious behavior. I'm still looking for a good explanation but if this experience helps other folks, I'll be real happy for ya.

If anyone has an explanation I'd like to see it.

Maybe just posting the problem called on the mystical powers of the Great Geek!

[Kellam]

After logging all of the results of my investigations, I began looking for anything that did not look right or seemed unusual (like the Secret Service - looking for the guy that seems out of place). I noticed that the Norton 360 logo was not in the task bar. Since Norton is known to take unexplained holidays this had not captured my attention before. I found that I could not open the Norton 360 control panel from the Start menu so I decided to re-install the thing. After a little over an hour of babysitting the install process, Norton seemed to have reinstalled and done enough scanning to be happy. I cranked up Firefox and linked into my home page with no problem.

I have no idea if Norton had just gotten wrapped around the axle and took the HTTP function with it or if, during the install it had found something and fixed it. As always, when magic happens around computers, I'm concerned because this just reinforces superstitious behavior. I'm still looking for a good explanation but if this experience helps other folks, I'll be real happy for ya.

If anyone has an explanation I'd like to see it.

Maybe just posting the problem called on the mystical powers of the Great Geek!

[Kellam]

Yet another update - reinstalling Norton 360 seemed to solve this problem - for a couple of days then it came back, along with some other tacky new tricks that included completely freezing, applications (mainly browsers) crashing, refusing to boot to full operation, and other stunts.

Finally, I began to suspect memory as the source. About six weeks ago I installed new 2GBs of DDR2 from Ultra that was supposed to clock correctly to my eMachines T5212 system. All looked good until this behavior started. Swapped old 1GB back in things look okay - for now.

More later if the problem persists. Off to look for a more reliable 2GB upgrade.