Thread: Calling all IT folks, help needed :)

Okay, so you all know my IT skills are not so hot.

Here is my dilemma...

I went to access a site from my home PC (Vista Home Premium) that I have been to several times over the past year and I got the message:

Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to windowsmoviemakers.net
Try reloading: windowsmoviemake­rs.­net
Additional suggestions:
Access a cached copy of windowsmoviemake­rs.­net

I tried a few more times over the weekend and no luck.

I tried on Internet Explorer and got:

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

I tried the other PC in our house, same problem.

When I tried to access it from my cell phone... no problem. The site is up and running and people have been posting to the forum all weekend.

When I access the site using the proxy server "SneakME.net" that coffecup listed a while back, no problem I can access it and look around and search and everything.

When I selected the "Diagnose Problem" on IE it said something about the

Layered Service Provider

So I searched Microsoft for the error and found out that I should:

Reset Winsock for Windows Vista
To reset Winsock for Windows Vista, follow these steps:
1.. Click Start, type cmd in the Start Search box, right-click cmd.exe,
click Run as administrator, and then press Continue.
2.. Type netsh winsock reset at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

Note If the command is typed incorrectly, you will receive an error
message. Type the command again. When the command is completed successfully,
a confirmation appears, followed by a new command prompt.
Then, go to step
3. Type exit, and then press ENTER. and restart computer

So I did that and restarted the PC.. still no luck but this time the IE message said:

Cannot communicate with www.windowsmoviemake­rs.­net
network diagnostics pinged the remote host but did not receive a response.

However while sitting right here when it said that... I used the "SneakME.net" on another tab and was able to access it and I was able to access it from my cell phone yet again.

I also cleaned up all of my history deleting the cache and cookies

Sooooooo... do any of you have any ideas? Why can't I access An active online community for Windows Movie Maker enthusiasts. without using the proxy server?

Since you can access other web sites your Internet connection is Ok. There is no need to handle with winsock.

I've just tried to access to the windowsmoviemake­rs.­net and got a message that my PC (with firefox browser) can't access the site. I tried once more with my mobile phone and opened this site without any problem. It really looks strange.

Maybe it is just a temporary problem of the "windowsmoviemakers.net" server?

The good news is it's not a problem on your end, you don't have to fiddle with any settings on your computers. The bad news is that the people responsible for hosting that site probably messed something up. I have just tried to reach that site on a Linux PC from Firefox and it just won't load. So, as it happens once in a while, Windows actually is not to blame. I tried accessing the site both by URL and by IP address, and nothing appears. I monitored the network traffic between my computer and their server and it simply does not respond in any way.

I can't say for sure why the proxy server you used is able to reach the site, but it works for me, too, and pretty quickly as well. In your place I would use the proxy server to go there and if they have some kind of support contact there, you can tell them that you are unable to reach the site from any of your computers without using such a proxy, and a guy from halfway around the world using a different OS has the same problem.

Edit: CoffeeCup wrote his reply while I was writing mine. The observation "doesn't like the IP address" is a possible explanation, but likely because of a misconfigured server on their part. It's not the firewall on your side, not your browser or a plug-in and no virus or other malware, I can exclude all these things on my side.

As always, you guys are AMAZING!! Hugs and kisses. Thank you for such a speedy and great reply to me. I have been banging my head against my poor computer for three days and almost wrongly accusing hubby of messing up the computer. Thank you for saving him from the dog house!! I told him right away what you said and he is soooo pleased to know it was NOT his fault!!!

I can't reach it right now from Windows and firefox. tracert and ping don't hit it either.

Hey everyone...

So I tried emailing one person and got no response and then just posted the problem under their Off Topic area as there was no other way to contact them and they don't have a section for Tech Help about the Forum like we do !!

I did get a very fast reply and quick solution:

My web hosting provider has redundant Internet connections, one with Time Warner and the other with Sprint. Last week the switch on the Time Warner side lost power and when it came back online the routing tables on the switch lost the settings. This caused any web request that routed through the Time Warner side to fail. We weren't aware any problems since most of the traffic goes through the Sprint side.

I'm glad that you posted that you were having a problem or else I wouldn't have even noticed.

The site is now working fine for me so I thank you all again for your help as I was able to post your information in my post to them.