Tech help

[MrMonk]

11:00 p.m. (EST)

http://www.nytimes.com/

Click on the above link and tell me what you get.

I'm getting a page from directNIC.

The same thing happens with the Aol.com front page and several other sites that I frequently use.

Can someone tell me how I can fix this?

[bemildred]

1. I get the New York Times site.

There are many possibilities, but some sort of problem with DNS comes to mind. Perhaps if you provided some details as to your running environment etc.?

(DNS is the thing that translates "http://nytimes.com" into an address in the form 123.456.789.123.)

[MrMonk]

3. Windows XP

The problem came up on a work machine. It runs Windows XP; the browser is IE 6.0. I don't know what else might be relevant, except that the particular server is dedicated to internet/intranet functions.

Is there a simple way to reset the DNS table?

[bemildred]

5. RoyBGiv or Jayfish might be more helpful with that sort of thing.

A couple things you can try:

1.) Try going to "http://199.239.137.200" (the translated address).
If that works, it would further indicate that the problem lies in getting from "http://nytimes.com" to the numeric address.

2.) Try clearing your browser's cache and history.

3.) The comments below on getting rid of a hijack might be worth looking into.

4.) There has been a war of sorts between big bandwidth providers which could be at the root of this too, IIRC.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Don't look at me. :-)

You gave the same advice I would have given in almost the exact order. I just would have cleared the cache and flushed the DNS first. I've seen things like this happen with a screwed up DNS cache.

And if using the IP directly didn't work, I would have guessed a hijack too, FWIW. That's what it always seems to be with companies using IE. The sysadmins get lazy about updating patches, and there's always that one employee who thinks it's safe to do anything just because s/he is at the work computer. This is he perfect recipe for virus and worm infections and the manner in which corporate sites often end up compromised.

I suspect point #4 is going to become more of a problem in the future.

[hobbit709]

2. sounds like you've been hijacked

[Berserker]

4. Sounds like a Browser Hijack

Go to this link and they will help you rid this scum.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/

[MrMonk]

6. Thanks for the info.

Tech support fixed the problem before I got in this morning. Apparently, anyone in the office who opened their browser over the weekend had been affected.