DNS Problem

I have 4 computers in my home network running through a linksys wireless router/access point to the internet. 3 of the PC's are connected to the router via cable and one is a laptop that connects through wireless. One desktop is running Win98, one is running Win2K and the other two (1 desktop, and 1 laptop) are running XP Home, SP2.

About a week and a half ago, the internet connection on the XP desktop stopped working. The browser consistently failed on every page lookup with a DNS error. Ineterestingly, a few days later the internet connection on the XP laptop stopped working with what appears to be exactly the same symptoms. The other two systems continue to work fine.

I have spent considerable time trying to trouble shoot this but I cannot find the problem. The settings seem to be the same on all of the systems. Some of the relevant details are:

- Basic connectivity to the router seems fine, i.e. the DHCP initialization of the interfaces appears to be working fine.

- ipconfig /all looks good on both XP machines
- ipconfig /release followed by ipconfig /renew works fine every time (i.e. no errors) but does not affect the problem
- at the command prompt I can use the nslookup command to resolve names and it works fine (this part I do not understand!). for example:

C:> nslookup www.google.com

- works fine, returns ip address(es) for google.

C:> ping <ip address from above>

- works fine - no errors

C:> ping www.google.com

- fails with a dns lookup error (!!!)

- As I mentioned above, IE never works, it always just displays the standard dns error page
- I have flushed the DNS cache, did not help
- e-mail client does not work - dns error
- Windows networking is fine on both XP machines, I can print to a network shared printer and I can map to shared network drives on the other PC's and copy files to/from them

Clearly the problem is specific to the dns name resolution but I am stuck. I do not know what to try next. I have gone through all of the steps in the Basic <a href="http://get-certified.net?go=spyware" onmouseover="window.status = 'goto: spyware';return 1" onmouseout="window.status=''">Spyware</a>/Trojan/Virus tutorial (thread 35407) and it did not help. Ad-aware and Spybot each found s few (7 & 8) small things (cookies and a few registry entries) but neither seemed to point to this problem. (I can post the log and screen shot if required)

What should I try next?

Note, I am posting this late Wednesday night and I will not be able to get back to working on this until Thursday evening after work. If you reply with suggestions in the meantime, do not be dismayed by my lack of response.

Note 2, the two "broken" PC's belong to my wife and my 15 year old daughter...the nag factor is building steadillly. Please help!!

Thanks.

 

on windows xp with service pack 2 try netsh winsock reset in a command prompt window. Then try hard setting dns in both the router and the local area connection properties.

 

I tried the winsock reset and hard coded the dns server address in the PC and the router. It did not work. Still the same problem.

 

I found my problem today! It was caused by the firewall I am using on the two XP machines (Norton Internet Security 2005). I disabled it and boom, everything started working again.

I went in to Norton and found that it wa configured to block all requests from "Microsoft Generic Host Process for WIN32 Services". I opened that up and all is well.

Problem solved!

 

Glad you found it. One thing I would like to add is that I have never had luck with any Norton product. I would never use them. Whenever there is a really strange thing going on with the machine, you can usually find its one of Norton's wonderful products.

 

I have used norton for as long as I can remember and have never had issues with. Wonder why everyone else does?