Browser will not load certain pages ...

All,
Got a maddening problem, and looking for suggestions.

My daughter has an XP machine, and until recently, she routinely
visited www.picnik.com with no problems. She recently sought help
from our household IT professional (me) because "it was not working".
Here's what I know:

1) Not browser related. Have installed/uninstalled one-by-one Safari,
Chrome, and Firefox. All load the same common websites (Google,
Facebook, etc). All resolve Picnik URL, and appear to start loading,
but never finish.
2) Is machine related. Can load Picnik easily on Win 7/Chrome and
Ubuntu/Firefox machines. All machines connect wirelessly through same
router.
3) Not network related. Thought it could be the WLAN NIC and
bandwidth, but disabled WLAN and wired directly to router. Same
behavior. Good bandwith (about 1.3 Mb/sec) confirmed by downloading
large files.
4) Not Flash (Picnik is Flash). Other Flash sites working fine.
Reinstalled Flash to no avail.
5) Cleared cache, history, temp files, etc. About 20 GB available on
80 GB disk.
6) Seems to be high, rhythmic disk activity. HDD light on for one
second, then off for one second, over and over. Maybe a big swap
file?

Looking for ideas,
Chris

M100C <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:690e84b7-e7e6-4015-bf96-(E-Mail Removed)
:

> All,
> Got a maddening problem, and looking for suggestions.
>
> My daughter has an XP machine, and until recently, she routinely
> visited www.picnik.com with no problems. She recently sought help
> from our household IT professional (me) because "it was not
> working". Here's what I know:
>
> 1) Not browser related. Have installed/uninstalled one-by-one
> Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. All load the same common websites
> (Google, Facebook, etc). All resolve Picnik URL, and appear to
> start loading, but never finish.
> 2) Is machine related. Can load Picnik easily on Win 7/Chrome and
> Ubuntu/Firefox machines. All machines connect wirelessly through
> same router.
> 3) Not network related. Thought it could be the WLAN NIC and
> bandwidth, but disabled WLAN and wired directly to router. Same
> behavior. Good bandwith (about 1.3 Mb/sec) confirmed by
> downloading large files.
> 4) Not Flash (Picnik is Flash). Other Flash sites working fine.
> Reinstalled Flash to no avail.
> 5) Cleared cache, history, temp files, etc. About 20 GB available
> on 80 GB disk.
> 6) Seems to be high, rhythmic disk activity. HDD light on for one
> second, then off for one second, over and over. Maybe a big swap
> file?
>
> Looking for ideas,
> Chris
>

It is most likely a specific port or ports that are being blocked by
that machine. The symptoms could be caused by a firewall program on
the machine. Try temporarily disabling all firewalls.

The problem could also be caused by certain malware that inserts
itself into the TCP/IP stack much like a firewall. Likewise,
improper removal of such malware can cause this problem. Try
scanning your machine for malware with a program like freeware
Malwarebytes
< http://www.malwarebytes.org/ >

When all else fails, often one of the following freeware programs can
sometimes fix the problem:

LSPFix: <http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm>
WinsockXPFix <http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html>

HTH,
John

On Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:29:39 -0800 (PST), M100C <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>All,
>Got a maddening problem, and looking for suggestions.
>
>My daughter has an XP machine, and until recently, she routinely
>visited www.picnik.com with no problems. She recently sought help
>from our household IT professional (me) because "it was not working".
>Here's what I know:
>
>1) Not browser related. Have installed/uninstalled one-by-one Safari,
>Chrome, and Firefox. All load the same common websites (Google,
>Facebook, etc). All resolve Picnik URL, and appear to start loading,
>but never finish.
>2) Is machine related. Can load Picnik easily on Win 7/Chrome and
>Ubuntu/Firefox machines. All machines connect wirelessly through same
>router.


It's possibly a MTU issue. Read this for a description and possible
resolution.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk17...80093bc7.shtml


Jim.