One web site broken: one system, multiple browsers

[richw42]

This is really weird. If I go to www.OpenDNS.com, or almost any of the pages at that site, the browser tab hangs. The activity indicator shows busy, but nothing shows up in the display. I can right-click to view source, and see that some source has been loaded. Apparently there is something about the pages that hangs the browser.
This happens on both chrome and windows explorer 8. The system is windows 7 pro x64 oem, new system. I do not have the same problem on an xp system.
Help! How can I figure out what's causing this problem?
The fine print: I installed some old software (VB6), clicking past two incompatibility warnings. Perhaps it replaced an important dll?
I tried sfc /verifyonly and no problems were found.
I have not found any other "broken" web sites.

 

[Capt.Jack Sparrow]

Hi there,

Go to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc and open the Host file with Notepad and check if that website is listed there.

 

[richw42]

Go to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc and open the Host file with Notepad and check if that website is listed there.

That's an interesting idea. However, hosts is just comments so far. Note that it appears that the browser is fetching the page, but dies trying to display it.

 

[richw42]

OP here. I may be crazy, but it seems like the opendns DNS servers are incompatible with the opendns.com web site. I changed my DNS server to be 4.2.2.1, ran ipconfig /flushdns, and rebooted. Everything started working normally. I restored the opendns DNS servers, did ipconfig /flushdns, rebooted, and the problem returned. That is, the opendns.com web site does not load normally. If I wait long enough, I do get something, but it's missing much of the pretty stuff.

 

[Dwarf]

Works for me. And I use OpenDNS for my DNS server.

 

[richw42]

Works for me. And I use OpenDNS for my DNS server.

I wonder if you are in a different geographical area, and thus use a different server? They do claim redundancy, don't they? Perhaps something is wrong with a local server? Or maybe my ISP is doing something interesting, although I have no idea what that could be. Since I have the same problem with multiple computers here, I'm not sure what I could be doing to cause the problem. I did try rebooting my Linksys router.

Hmm, maybe comparing trace routes would answer the question of whether we are using the same servers:

$ tracert 208.67.222.222

Tracing route to resolver1.opendns.com [208.67.222.222]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    23 ms    24 ms    23 ms  L100.STTLWA-DSL-04.verizon-gni.net [71.113.17.1]

  3    23 ms    23 ms    23 ms  P3-2.STTLWA-LCR-02.ncnetwork.net [184.19.242.192
]
  4    25 ms    25 ms    25 ms  50.34.2.37
  5    74 ms    50 ms    50 ms  ae3---0.cor01.sttl.wa.frontiernet.net [74.40.1.1
53]
  6   116 ms    50 ms    50 ms  ae1---0.cor02.ptld.or.frontiernet.net [74.40.2.1
53]
  7    49 ms    49 ms    49 ms  ae0---0.cor01.ptld.or.frontiernet.net [74.40.4.1
09]
  8    51 ms    51 ms    87 ms  ae1---0.cor01.plal.ca.frontiernet.net [74.40.2.1
58]
  9    50 ms    50 ms    52 ms  so--0-0-0---0.br01.plal.ca.frontiernet.net [74.4
0.3.150]
 10    50 ms    50 ms    50 ms  xe-0.paix.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [198.32.176
.14]
 11    50 ms    50 ms    50 ms  po-3.r04.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.2
18]
 12    48 ms    49 ms    48 ms  ge-2-3.r04.plalca01.us.ce.gin.ntt.net [140.174.2
1.166]
 13    49 ms    48 ms    48 ms  resolver1.opendns.com [208.67.222.222]

Trace complete.

I just figured out what I have to do. I have to use wireshark and capture the DNS traffic, and see if there is a difference between working and non-working configurations. Sigh. I didn't want to make a career out of this.

 

[richw42]

I just did some debugging, and found the following:

With DNS server 4.2.2.1, www-files.opendns.com resolves to 208.67.216.142, and everyone is happy.
With DNS server 208.67.222.222 (which is one of the two opendns servers), www-files.opendns.com resolves to 204.194.237.142, and the web page does not display properly.
It is interesting that after a delay of about 30 seconds, there are a bunch of java DNS requests, and then the opendns.com page is displayed without decorations.
In the 4.2.2.1 case, the page displays correctly immediately with no java DNS requests.