[Tech] Problem with internet

[Taffy]

Having a spot of bother with my internet

Basically, everything works fine on my computer for quite a while (a few hours usually) but then eventually, internet browsers stop working, saying they can't connect to any websites. If I'm torrenting or something at the time, they still download fine and dandy and Vista tells me I'm fully connected to the internet. Also, when I ctrl-alt-del, I close all the running applications (i.e. Firefox/IE) but when I go to the processes tab they are still running and using a large amount of my memory (sometimes over 60,000k) When I go into the Network and sharing Centre and click View Status, I notice that whilst IPv4 connectivity says internet, IPv6 says limited.

A simple restart fixes this and it works again, but the restart takes ages. It's really just a pain in the backside. I'm thinking of formatting and reinstalling Vista once my exams are over anyway because I've got a virus that just won't be destroyed by anything. Could these be related?

Does anyone have a similar issue, or anybody know how to fix it? i would mucho appreciate any help and cookies will be dished out

 

[thatbloke]

I'm thinking of formatting and reinstalling Vista once my exams are over anyway because I've got a virus that just won't be destroyed by anything. Could these be related?

Yes.

If you have any kind of virus/spyware/whatever then you should get that sorted first as there is no telling what it could be doing.

It sounds like DNS is dying, but figure out how to get that virus off first.

 

[KillCrazy]

I used to have a problem with our router going a bit funny when torrenting. It would go from restarting itself when I'm torrenting to the DNS failing until it was restarted manually.

Does your computer connect via a router?

 

[Ronin Storm]

As KC points out, torrenting is quite possibly the problem. Many cheaper routers end up overflowed by the large number of connections torrenting requires and gradually functions start to collapse, for example DNS no longer responding thus the appearance that web pages are no longer accessible. Here's a test you can try when things appear to be broken...

In your command prompt (Start | Run... | cmd) type:

ping 195.92.195.92

nslookup www.cheese.com

I anticipate the first will succeed, albeit with high latency or even packet loss, but that the second will fail or be exceptionally slow.

You can try killing the processes themselves (iexplore.exe and firefox.exe) but I've found that when my computer has gone into that sort of berserk state it takes a reboot to get it out of it. I've also found, over the past few days, that some combination of Firefox and IE8 are susceptible to DNS failure and low bandwidth connections...

The whole IPv4 and IPv6 thing is a red herring. Ignore the IPv6. You are almost certainly using IPv4 for everything, even if global address space is translated to IPv6... it's irrelevant to you for now.

You say you've got a virus? That may also be giving you shit (read: probably is!). What's the virus? Have you been through the removal protocols (which may be more complex than just running your virus scanner)?

 

[Zooggy]

Ahey,

I used to have a virus that killed my DNS, anywhere from two minutes to two hours into starting up. By all means, do clean up the thing.

I recommend MicroWorld eScan (30-day eval at www.mwti.net) for a quick attempt at fixxitz...

Cheers,
J.

 

[PsiSoldier]

Why wait until your exams are over? Back your stuff up onto a pen drive, move it to another computer and make sure it's not infected, then reformat away. Sorts your problem out sooner

 

[Taffy]

Does your computer connect via a router?

It does indeed, but it used to work fine with torrenting until about the time this virus appeared. My router was quite a cheap NetGear one, but like i said I hadn't had any problems at all until this virus occured.

You can try killing the processes themselves (iexplore.exe and firefox.exe) but I've found that when my computer has gone into that sort of berserk state it takes a reboot to get it out of it. I've also found, over the past few days, that some combination of Firefox and IE8 are susceptible to DNS failure and low bandwidth connections...

Yeah, I try to quite them using Task Manager but it just doesn't do it, so I always end up restarting.

You say you've got a virus? That may also be giving you shit (read: probably is!). What's the virus? Have you been through the removal protocols (which may be more complex than just running your virus scanner)?

The virus is m.exe, and I originally picked it up from my memory stick. I've tried killing it with AVG, ZoneAlarm, deleting it from the memory stick etc. but it just won't go. I posted here a little while ago about it and I remember someone saying that there were registry keys I had to delete, but I recall that failing as well. I'll post up the results of the cmd prompts next time it happens

If you have any kind of virus/spyware/whatever then you should get that sorted first as there is no telling what it could be doing.

It sounds like DNS is dying, but figure out how to get that virus off first.

So if I do format the hard drive, will DNS start working again?

 

[thatbloke]

DNS is the protocol that turns a name such as www.google.co.uk into a real IP address that your browser/whatever can use to actually connect to a server, and then, for instance, request a webpage.

So what appears to be happening, from your description, is that things that are already connected, stay connected. However, things that have not already connected cannot make a new connection. When this kind of behaviour happens, it would indicate not that your internet connection has gone down completely, but that for whatever reason you cannot resolve any new addresses.

When this happens, open up a command prompt and try the following command, to see if it helps:

ipconfig /flushdns

Also, it would be worth checking in your system event log to see if there is any kind of error message in there at about the time that the problem starts. To view this, go to control panel->Administrative tools->Event Viewer and see if there are any items in any of the logs that are there that are flagged up as errors, there may be something in there to work with.

 

[Haven]

As already mentioned - fresh install is your best and quickest bet to clean things up.

Purely for educational/curiosity reasons I'd install WireShark and study the packets your system is sending/receiving.

You've not mentioned other computers on your network - its always possible that DNS lookups are getting hammered from other sources than your machine.

As for DNS servers to use - I reccomend you use openDNS just in-case your ISP DNS is flakey.

Finally my anti-MS shite $0.02 worth is that Vista networking is overly complex and doesn't work nearly as well as windows XP. I downgraded in large part from Universal to XP for that reason for gaming.

 

[Taffy]

Right then, here are the results from all the prompts you gave me

Bloke, when I typed in 'ipconfig /flushdns' it came up with 'the requested operation requires elevation'. Doesn't sound good lol.

Ronin, heres what I got for you

C:\Users\Rhys>ping 195.92.195.92

Pinging 195.92.195.92 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 195.92.195.92: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.92.195.92: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.92.195.92: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.92.195.92: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 195.92.195.92:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 15ms, Maximum = 20ms, Average = 17ms


C:\Users\Rhys>nslookup www.cheese.com
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.cheese.com
Address: 195.149.84.89

 

[Ronin Storm]

Right then, here are the results from all the prompts you gave me

Bloke, when I typed in 'ipconfig /flushdns' it came up with 'the requested operation requires elevation'. Doesn't sound good lol.

Ronin, heres what I got for you

Well...

On the /flushdns I suspect you're on Vista and /flushdns will require you to run the command prompt as Administrator.

However, the results you post back imply that DNS is actually working. Something else is awry. Just your browsers giving you trouble, right?

 

[Taffy]

However, the results you post back imply that DNS is actually working. Something else is awry. Just your browsers giving you trouble, right?

Sometimes, even though uTorrent etc are still downloading, I can't open them from the system tray and once again the process won't close through the task manager. But this is quite rare and sometimes occurs when browsers are still working, so is probably unrelated.

Apart from that, it is just browsers. MSN, Xfire etc. all still work fine. One other thing I noticed is that it usually happens after i've downloaded a few large files through the browser, or been streaming movies (I usually buffer a few at a time so they run smoothly when I play them)

 

[Ronin Storm]

Hmm, have you done a full hard disk check, including surface check, recently? If not, do so.

 

[Taffy]

Hmm, have you done a full hard disk check, including surface check, recently? If not, do so.

How would I go about doing that? I'm not entirely sure what you mean

 

[Taffy]

Why wait until your exams are over? Back your stuff up onto a pen drive, move it to another computer and make sure it's not infected, then reformat away. Sorts your problem out sooner

I can't put stuff onto a USB because my current USB is infected with the virus, and any other memory stick that I put into the machine also gets infected.

Basically, I need to burn all my needed files onto CD's and then format the whole bloody thing. It's a bit of a faff really so I may as well just wait until the exams are finished really. I've got enough on my plate already