Browsers randomly stop letting me browse, need to restart to fix.

Ahleckz

Ahleckz

Ahleckz

Soldato
Joined
7 Nov 2009
Posts
19,863
Location
Glasgow
Hello

Every now and then (usually happens every couple of hours) when I try to navigate to a website (doesn't matter what the site is, same result for many) Firefox tells me:
"The connection was refused when attempting to contact (site attempted).
Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection".

I can usually (but not always) ping the websites in question fine though, and MSN Messenger continues to work (often, but not always).
I don't have a firewall (minus the Windows inbuilt one which was turned off anyway). I've done a full system scan using AVG & AdAware and it returned nothing serious - just a handful of tracking cookies.

The only thing that restores my browsing abilities is a total restart of the computer. Restart of the router doesn't make any difference.

Same story with Chrome and IE.

Done fresh installs, cleared cache, and temp files (use CCLeaner frequently) and tried a new router.
No problems at my ISPs end (Static IP address isn't assigned to anyone else, for example)

At my wits end really, Google isn't helping.
Anyone got any ideas?
 
Last edited:
Coldzero said:
Weird issue, does it happen on any other pc/laptop in the house?
Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay.

No other computers in the house. Had a replacement router (for a different reason) and it still happens so assuming it's something on this computer. Not a clue what that could be though.
Tempted to wipe the drive and start again...
 
I had this many years ago, and it was caused by the ZoneAlarm firewall I was using at that time. Uninstalled it and never ever had that problem again. So does this computer run something different to all the others in terms of a firewall/antivirus ?
 
Don't have a firewall on 'ere, only Avast. Used to use AVG but changed over to avast. The problem may of started when I changed over I suppose but couldn't be sure.

I'll uninstall Avast and put AVG back on and see if that fixes it.
 
Avast is fine, I've used it for years. But if that is a recent change then it could be part of the problem, you never know, but somehow I doubt it
 
Not sure if related or not but last night the problem happened again (hadn't had a chance to change AV software) however google still worked.

I could search for things, and they would be listed however I would be unable to open the pages that it threw up.

Mindboggling!
 
One other possibility is that it's the firewall SPI settings on your router. This seems unlikely since you've changed the router, but it's not impossible if the new one is the same model as the old one. Some routers have the option to adjust these settings, others don't. In my case the only options were to switch off SPI or replace the router (I did the latter). It was only affecting one PC on my network, which led me to believe that it was the PC that was causing the problem, but it turned out that was the only PC that was fast enough to issue requests quickly enough to trigger the SPI blacklisting rules.
 
If every pc bar one is fine, either you have a faulty cable, port/nic or it's software related. It could quite easily be residual damage from malware, poorly written program, bad firewall etc..

Whatever it is you could have drastically reduced the list by spending 1 hour formatting & reinstalling. You can keep trying different things but you've been doing that for 2 weeks, you may have lost less time by just starting from scratch. It's something to consider at any rate.
 
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