# Couldn't load GRF for 3 days - ALL other sites worked



## goldsilverpro (May 2, 2015)

This post is a copy of two posts I made on the Moderators forum earlier this week, with a little adding and editing. I had a strange computer problem that seems to be fairly common. Two of the mods said they have had very similar problems, one involving GRF. Here's how it worked out in my particular case.
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1st post:

I hadn't been able to load the forum for about 3 days. Every other site in the world but not GRF. I thought that it was shut down for maintenance or something. It ended up being related to my router.
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2nd post:

I read a lot of horror stories about people spending as many as 6 months trying to figure this out. Some could load anything but their own website!

I don't think I come close to understanding the "why" of it. I do think that the particular problem of not being able to load only one single site (it times out), when all other sites can be loaded, is usually related somehow to the router, the IP, the ISP, DNS, or some entry on one of the computers that has been changed, in some way, for some obscure reason. I can't see how the site in question could have anything to do with this problem. The problem is most always on your side of the line. I don't think anyone can determine the exact workings of any specific case, until they have solved the problem. On internet forums, the techs can only give you about 10 things to try, all of which sometimes work, but not for me. This weird problem is more common than I would have guessed.

In my case, it was totally my goof. It wasn't the router but it was related to the router. I had completely restored Windows on one of my computers about 4 days ago and forgot to re-install the router and driver software on that computer. This morning, after re-installing it from the Belkin site (I lost the original disk), I am able to get GRF on both computers, through the router. It was weird that, originally, on the computer with no driver software, I was still able to get every website except GRF.

What got me near the right track was when I bypassed the router and ran the ethernet cable on the modem directly to one of the computers - It Worked!. If this ever happens again, that will be the first thing I try. Took a lot of possibilities out of the picture and focused on the router. (see quote below)

Maybe there were other sites out there that I couldn't get. I didn't know about them because I didn't try to get them. GRF just happened to be one of the few infected ones, if there were more than one. Maybe its selection had something to do with my loading it at least 20 times, for about 4 hours each day. Maybe GRF was the only one infected.

I get the feeling from the tech forums that, in many or most cases, this type problem has been created by the user in his own computer system, somehow. Has anything been changed lately? If I had asked myself that question right off, the answer would have been, why yes, I reverted Win7 on one computer back to the way it came out of the factory. Pretty big change. Oh crap - I forgot to re-install the damned router software! Only took 3 days to figure that out.

I was lucky that my particular glitch was very easy to solve, once I narrowed it down (put it through a series of sieves). This problem is sort of like cancer - I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. There seems to be a trend that the website(s) infected is the one that you use all the time (that is what's so nasty about it) - otherwise, you probably wouldn't know it existed. Besides my case and the cases in the link below, this is somewhat backed up by those that can't load their own website. They might go on there 50 times a day, especially if it's new and they're still working on it.

Here's a pretty good discussion of the problem (2 pages). If you read it, you will see that this can be caused by a myriad of different things. I haven't re-read the link but I don't remember any problems where a router wasn't somehow involved. 

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-92145-one-certain-site-will-not-load-help

I just now found this post from another site. The guy's logic was slightly flawed but he came up with the right answer, at least for me. Wish I had seen it a week ago. Although, for me, it *was* a computer problem - a missing driver.




> try connecting one of the PCs without the router.
> ... and see what happens. Since you changed the DNS settings and got the same result we know it's not a DNS issue. Since this is only happening with one website and a bunch or even several we know that it's probably not an internet connection issue. Since the issue is happening on two different PCs we know that it's more than likely not a PC issue. That leads us to the possibility of the router being the culprit. Try connecting one of the PCs directly to the internet with no router in the mix and see if that works. If it doesn't I would ensure that it isn't a PC issue by taking a PC to that location that is normally able to access the website and again connecting it straight to the internet with no router involved and trying the website. If it still doesn't work then it is a problem with your internet connection for sure and should be reported to your ISP.


If you get this problem, I hope this post helps.

Chris


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