Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Vigorously rubbing hard drives with magnets... Will it help?

by Apr 5, 2015 6:53PM PDT

Here's the problem,

For reasons unknown to me, my PC will only connect to Netflix, Gmail, and Google. All other websites time out and all applications will not connect to the internet.

I've booted in safe mode,scanned with Avast and Malware bites and they detect nothing, tried running 8.1's system repair, and system restore. I've also made sure that my anti malware and firewall have the correct permissions (I'm fairly sure)

Teetering on the point of rubbing my hard drive with magnets and tossing it to the wood chipper, I come to you. Please help me in my darkest hour to resolve this problem and allow the beautiful, holy light that is the internet, bless my life again.

Discussion is locked

3 Posts
- Collapse + Expand Details
- Collapse -
Answer
Re: connect
by Former Forum moderator Apr 5, 2015 6:58PM PDT

I assume it did work in the past. So - if you can't find a cause - go back in time (in Windows 8.1 that's called refresh or reset, not repair or restore) and all will be fine again.

But before doing it, take your laptop with you to a friend to see if it's really an issue of your machine (quite likely) or of the modem, router or ISP. If it happens to be a desktop, ask a friend (or maybe yourself?) to check if his laptop, tablet or phone work. If any laptop works, and yours worked in the past, it's sure that setting Windows back to factory conditions fixes it. For all purposes, it's a new laptop then.

Kees

- Collapse -
Answer
If using Firefox
by Apr 5, 2015 7:00PM PDT

you can increase timeout. Open blank tab or page, put about:config into it, and when the warning comes up go past it. In the Search box put timeout. Find the one that applies and double it.

- Collapse -
Answer
To add to other responses
by Apr 5, 2015 7:30PM PDT

There's a lot of missing information in your OP as to your OS, who provides your service, what browser(s) you've tried, how you connect and what your connection settings are. One thing I do when having sporadic connection issues is change my preferred DNS server to Google by using 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 in the IP4 settings. If you're just using bookmarks, you can also try to manually type a few known valid urls and see what happens. I suppose it's possible some "re-direct" has happened that's now no longer working.

Back to Computer Help forum

CNET Forums

Operating Systems
Software
Electronics & Gadgets
Hardware
Tablets & Mobile Devices
General Help
Brand Forums
Roadshow Autos
Off Topic

Other Forums

Forum Info