Can only access 3 sites

[Alcott]

Does anyone know why, with AT&T U-verse, it has gotten to where I can only access a very few sites? Otherwise I get a diagnostics page, which never helps if I go through any troubleshooting steps. This site is not one of those few, but I am on a company computer now.

Once I got on a help chat, and the guy said it should be my phone lines. But that does not make sense, or how can I access anything at all? Those few sites-- Facebook, ScotTrade, Youtube-- are probably among the 5 that I most often used before this gradually came to be, and the other 2 that I now cannot access would be this site and lycosmail.

 

[Don]

My first thought was to clear your cache, empty your temporary internet files, stuff like that. I also did a search and found that you're not the only U-Verse customer to be having this problem. Seems to be something with DNS settings. I found a reference to this: http://www.mydigitallife.info/repair-and-reset-windows-vista-tcpip-winsock-catalog-corruption/ But I would recommend emptying the cache, clearing history, etc. before trying this.

 

[Alcott]

I learned a long time ago to 'clean up' and clear such things, so I do that regularly. But thank you; if I can't solve this my presence won't grace this site over the weekend (but hold the tears :laugh.

 

[Don]

Didn't mean to insult your intelligence; always start with the simple, and work up from there. Knew a guy once that charged someone $75 to fix a printer problem; turned out, all he did was connect the printer cable to the computer. I thought he ripped the guy off; he didn't see a problem with it.

I'm leaning towards the DNS solution. And take a look at resetting the TCP/IP (a link to that is in the article).

 

[Winman]

For a DNS problem, often you can simply right click on the computer icon at the bottom of your page for Network Connection and choose "Repair". It will disable your Network Connection and then enable it, flush DNS and several other steps. Sometimes you have to do it more than once.

 

[Magnetic Poles]

For DNS problems, another solution may be to use OpenDNS rather than your ISP's servers.

 

[Alcott]

Well, I'm logged in from home for the first time in 9 days or more, and I still can't figure this whole thing out. I tried moving my whole setup to another room to use a different wall jack-- same results. Yesterday I did a complete system restoral-- same results. Within the last half hour I was trying some more troubleshooting with the Properites->Connections and there was an option to browse, which I clicked on which just brought up a Bing page. So I searched for one of the pages I knew I have been unable to access, and.......here it is.

Maybe in the cyber world at least it's not always a mark of stupidity to keep trying the same things and to expect different results.