Strange IE6 Problem

[techteen143]

Whenever I try to log onto Yahoo Geocities w/ IE6 I get a 504 (server not found) error. That is the only place this has happened so far. I have checked all of my settings and it should work. On my other comp I can log on fine so it must be a software prob on my end. I have looked over all of my settings and they seem perfectly fine. Clean install of XP Pro w/ IE6, all updates & SP1. Any ideas?
Thanx

[vass0922]

try whackin' the cookies for yahoo

have you tried a real browser?
opera/mozillla? lol

have you tried to ping yahoo.com to see if it can resolve an IP?

[techteen143]

already got rid of the cookies, ping is fine.

[techteen143]

OK it's not just IE6, tried Mozilla and got an error: "The connection was refused when attempting to contact rd.yahoo.com" WTF!?
Any Ideas?

[Tungar]

Hi there,

I had the exact same problem, and it confounded me. I went through many different procedures in an attempt to stop this "The Connection Was Refused When Attempting To Connect to rd.yahoo.com." error message. I also had several other sites which returned the same error. The problem manifested itself no matter which browser I used, but other computers on the LAN could access these pages. This told me that it couldnt be the router/firewall, unless there was a specific rule set up for my IP. This wasn't so, so I knew the problem was a local networking fault.

I picked apart Windows Networking and cleaned it, then reassembled it...but still no joy at all. I had flushed the DNS cache, reset all the default settings for internet and networking...nada.

I was pulling my hair out when it occured to me to check the hosts file.

For those of you which have never heard of the hosts file, it is common to all platforms (to the best of my knowledge) which utilise TCP/IP for communications. It is a file where you may enter the IP address of a particular site/computer/service and give a corrisponding hostname to it. The computer will from then on use that reference for that hostname/ip, rather than go to an external dns server to lookup the ip of a requested host.

The file, under Windows XP is located
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Under Windows 9x, you can find it under C:\windows\system32 I think, but you may have to do a find file for it.

Once you open the file, it should resemble something like this

127.0.0.1 localhost

it may or may not contain further entries, and if you have the problem discussed in this thread, you should find an entry like this;

127.0.0.1 rd.yahoo.com

or similar. Dont worry about the IP, it may be set to something different...I myself had ad-blocking software installed some time ago (which has also been removed for some time), which had entered 100's of these entries to prevent ads from being displayed on webpages. For some reason, in their infinate wisdom, the manufacturers the software included rd.yahoo.com as a blocked site, and thus entered in the corrisponsing entry in the hosts file.

I hope this helps somewhat...it was a frustrating problem I was delighted to see the back of.....And judging by the problems you guys describe, then I am confident that this fix will work for you...

Cheers

Keith

[Tungar]

I doubt if SP1 would put a host entry into the hosts file for rd.yahoo.com....

that would amount to monopoly abuse .. (again!)

K

[Tungar]

Er,

Um I meant to point out that you should delete the entry for rd.yahoo.com from the hosts file. From then on you will find that you can access rd.yahoo.com normally.

ok, well I've made this more complex than it needed to be...ho hum....

K

[Ebisoba]

Just wondering, do you have the lastest Kazaalite installed on your machine. It comes with a hosts file that blocks ad sites