OK Normally I can diagnose/fix my own computer problems without much problem but this has me a little scuppered. 2 XP machines – neither can access a banking site (they can go through the login process but timeout), regardless of browser (tried IE, FF, opera, chrome). Fedora server machine on the same network accesses it fine with any browser. Went about killing off virus and spyware facilities on them – no improvement. Brought in my laptop, XP/IE – same “extra” software (avast etc) and it works perfectly.

I can only narrow it down to the machines themselves but I can’t for the life of me identify the problem. Stuffed. Thoughts?

Have you tried pinging it?

SSL is not working try these tips

No pingage seems to be allowed, even from the working machines. The site is actually accessible – its just the login process thats duff, it’s as though a script or app of some sort is freezing up during execution – it pauses for ~2 minutes and then just stops as if the page is unaccessible. I’m assuming I’m running an old version of something *like* JRE maybe, but I’ve updated everything I could find :S

I had that with HSBC once. Ended up Turning off/Turning On and it worked on the third attempt.

😀 the off then on solution doesnt work, it’s been over a period of about 2 months, before that it worked fine. Even risked the update to SP3!

Checking possible SSL problems, thanks muddy…

Check the hosts file for suspicious entries.

Think it’s under %windir%/system 32/drivers/etc/hosts

Should probably just have a localhost entry unless you’ve changed it

Will do, ta. Was in there not long ago and dont remember it but the user (parents) may have been fiddling.