Solved Windows 7 Can't Connect to Wordpress Blogs

[Acharn]

I'm still running Windows 7. For a couple of months now I've been unable to connect to some sites. I always get the error, "This site can't be reached ... ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT" I noticed recently that many of these sites are blogs being published on Wordpress. The problem is exactly the same on both Chrome and Firefox, but only on Windows 7 -- Firefox is able to connect to all of them when running on Linux, both Ubuntu and Fedora. Anybody else seen this problem? Anybody found a solution to it?

 

[file3456]

I need you to try the following:

Download portable Chrome and portable Firefox from here and here. Try those WordPress driven websites again. The SAME websites that gave you issues.

Do you still have the connection time out? What are the websites? Do other websites load?

Go to the website and generate a HAR file in Chrome. Zip the HAR file and upload here. Create a HAR file for Chrome (Do not login to a website or anything else. Just load the one site and produce the HAR file IF, and ONLY IF the portable browsers don't work.

Just for kicks, flush your DNS cache. If the WordPress driven websites are hosted from WordPress' hosting its self, maybe you have a bad cache. Go to search under the start orb. Type in the search box cmd. Right click cmd and run as administrator. Enter the following command: ipconfig /flushdns

Is there an anti-virus or firewall installed? Disable it once.

 

[Acharn]

Sorry for the delay. My computer has been acting weirdly. OK, I turned off my anti-virus, was still unable to reach the sites, and then Sophos Home was unable to update its database. I think Sophos Free no longer runs on Windows 7, but It's been very frustrating, and in the end I haven't been able to confirm that's the case. Anyway I ended up uninstalling it and installing AVG Free. I had already cleared my DNS cachd, but I did it again, no help. I installed the PortableApps application with Portable Chrome and Portable Firefox on an old USB 2.0 stick. Both fail to reach the sites. Here's a selection of sites that I can connect to in Linux, but not Windows 7:
acoup.blogbenjaminstudebaker.comfacthai.wordpress.comfirst-draft.comlongandvariable.wordpress.commikethemadbiologist.commotherjones.comsnarkypenguin.wordpress.comuneasymoney.comunlearningeconomics.wordpress.com

There are more, but they come up as links on news aggregator sites and I don't normally bother making a note of their URLs. The HAR file is enclosed as chromewebdata.rar.

 

[file3456]

This domain is wrong:

acoup.blogbenjaminstudebaker.com

It's:

https://benjaminstudebaker.com

The website:

unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com

says it's a private website and you need to login or create an account at WordPress and request access.




Are you using some sort of program or extension to view these websites? Or are you entering them in the address bar one by one? How did you acquire these websites?

It's taking at least 40 seconds to finally say there's no connection. The common denominator is that all the websites you listed here are from WordPress' hosting which is what I thought. Their ISP is called AUTOMATIC. If there is nothing in the middle here that's loading the websites, and entering them in by hand one by one doesn't work, then you have something on your machine preventing the connection to the WordPress hosting website. Could be a firewall, hosts file, malware, anti-virus software, etc. Does going to WordPress.com: Create a Free Website or Blog even work? Try WordPress.com: Create a Free Website or Blog as well.

Try the following:

Run the attached batch file on your desktop. After about a minute or so the command window will close and a log file called results.log will be on your desktop. zip (rar) that log file and upload here.

Go into safe mode on your computer WITH networking and launch each browser going to a website that doesn't work like,

mikethemadbiologist.com

You may want to try,

https://mikethemadbiologist.com

But the appended https shouldn't be needed as the website has a redirection for an upgrade to https.

View attachment ping_and_trace.bat


PS:

If you see that the results.log has errors, ping this IP in the command prompt.

ping 192.0.78.234

I want to rule out errors with domain name resolution.

And I forgot how to tell you how to get into safe mode in case you don't know how. When you boot the computer keep pressing the F7 key once a second. Now chose 'safe mode with networking.'

The actual time to hit the F7 key is after BIOS/UEFI loads and right before Windows loads. When Windows loads it's looking for that key press, but it does it after BIOS/UEFI has loaded. Windows is what has to interpret the key press. Some BIOS/UEFI's load so fast you have no choice but to keep pressing F7. Or you temporally slow down boot time via options in BIOS/UEFI.

 

[Acharn]

Sorry for the malformed sentence

acoup.blogbenjaminstudubaker.com

There was supposed to be a newline after

acoup.blog

II have an account at Wordpress, but I can't connect with their site now. To login at

unlearningeconomics.com

I have to enter the site, click on "Log in," and the site redirects me to the Wordpress site, which is supposed to redirect me back to them but doesn't. It's a huge PITA, but I don't have to login to read the site, only to comment, which I rarely do.

I access the internet only with Chrome and Firefox browsers. I used to use Netscape, but ...

The ping_and_trace.bat failed,

Pinging mikethemadbiologist.com [192.0.78.133] with 32 bytes of data:Reply from 192.168.1.2: Destination host unreachable.Reply from 192.168.1.2: Destination host unreachable.Reply from 192.168.1.2: Destination host unreachable.Reply from 192.168.1.2: Destination host unreachable.Ping statistics for 192.0.78.133:    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),Tracing route to mikethemadbiologist.com [192.0.78.133]over a maximum of 30 hops:  1  Henry [192.168.1.2]  reports: Destination host unreachable.Trace complete.

Same with pinging 192.0.78.234. "Destination host unreachable."

Thanks for the advice about F7 to enter Safe Mode. I swear it always used to be F8, and F7 now brings up an instruction to press F8 to enter Safe Mode.

I tried running AVG Antivirus in Safe Mode but it crashed. In normal mode it does not find anything. Neither does ESET Offline Scanner or the Kaspersky Rescue Disk. I'm beginning to fear I may have to abandon Windows 7 sooner than I wished.

 

[file3456]

I'm betting it's your anti-virus or firewall. It's not Windows 7. Even if it is the OS, it probably can be fixed. I'd completly uninstall those products once and see what happens. They can and will mess up the TCP/IP stack. I'm on an educated hunch that this is what the issue is though.

You said you have AVG? Run this: Uninstalling AVG AntiVirus using AVG Clear | AVG


It's far better to use an anti-virus tool they made for removal. Some of those anti-virus products bury themselves so far in the OS it's a living nightmare.

I don't even use an anti-virus. I use some unorthodox methods. Funny though. I haven't gotten a virus since I ran Windows 98se, and I was running the aforementioned AVG of all things. Slipped right on through. That was before I knew more about computers and what have you. I used to swear by Avira, then they went to crap. Then I went with the free version of Bitdefender, then that went to crap as well. So the three primary protections I have in place are: How I use the Internet, periodic data backups and OS clones, and running ALL browsers and Thunderbird in a highly configured sandbox known as Sandboxie. But there is much more that I don't feel like going on about. It encompasses knowing how to prevent a reverse shell, polymorphic malware (ransomware) and other crap of the hacker realm. When you understand it, you can prevent it is the moral of the story. Many people don't. So anti-virus companies take advantage of that with a paid for product that WILL sell you out.


Anyway, in addition to removing the anti-virus, reset the whole TCP/IP stack. You can do that with the commands I added to my repository here. Just click on the source folder. They're all there.

Oh, if this works and you need an anti-virus solution, I'll offer some advice.

Come to think of it. Ping this IP once please.

ping 1.1.1.1

Pro tip. Many IP addresses can't be pinged, or they rate limit the ping to combat an ICMP flood. So a DNS provider from OpenDNS, Google or CloudFlare is what should be used unless you know there is no rate limiting or blocking of ICMP packets with another IP. I already tested the address I had you ping in the batch file myself to make sure it wasn't rate limited or blocking ICMP packets.

 

[Acharn]

ping 1.1.1.1 succeeded, all 4 packets got a reply.

Yeah, not sure of the timing, but I think this dates from a day I got stupid and decided to add an extension to Chrome that came from outside the Chrome Store. Now my MS Restore point is farkled (Restore utility says it's not there, there actually should be several) and my system backup on an external hard drive is also farkled. I got too damned complacent. Well, I've got the Win 7 install disk, and if worst comes to worst I can wipe the whole hard drive and install Linux. I'll see if the guys at Bleeping Computer can help, they're really into virus recovery. Thanks for your help, you really got me to thinking more clearly about what' going on -- for sure I'm going to disconnect that external hard drive except when I'm actually backing something up.