Computer Hope

Internet & Networking => Networking => Topic started by: midnightfire on April 26, 2010, 09:49:22 PM

Title: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 26, 2010, 09:49:22 PM
lately, i haven't been able to connect to the steam store. i'm able to play games online through steam, have them update, and even download/install games that i own through steam. i've also updated steam to the latest build. i'm also not able to connect to the interwebs through internet explorer, but i can use firefox just fine. i can download things and post on forums, etc. then just a minute ago, i downloaded and installed google earth, but i get 3 errors when i start it:

error 1: We were unable to connect to the Google Earth servers to activate your account.
then it tells me it can connect to the help page to try and resolve the issue, but theres nothing on the page.

error 2: Google Earth could not contact http://kh.google.com:80/. Please check your network connection and try again in 15 minutes.
that message gives me another link to a support page, which shows the same result as the first error.

error 3: Google Earth could not establish a new session with the EarthServer.
it goes on to say it will only display data from cache and will notify me if it connects.

i've determined that all of these issues are caused by some weird network problem. not sure what it could be, as i can play online games and download things and stuff. any insight would be terrific. i'll provide more info if needed. thanks in advance.

edit: all these programs are allowed through windows firewall.
edit 2: itunes can't connect to the store/genius/what have you, either. forgot that one lol.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 27, 2010, 10:55:00 PM
kay, almost 24 hours and no replies, so this is a bamp and i think i may have figured out the issue, but am confused still. it seems i don't have an external ip address, as shown in the screencap. what could have caused this? how can i fix it? thanks in advance.

[recovering disk space - old attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Salmon Trout on April 28, 2010, 12:05:43 AM
bamp? What language is that?
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Sid on April 28, 2010, 02:49:09 AM
bamp? What language is that?

4chan?
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Salmon Trout on April 28, 2010, 02:58:54 AM
Let nobody say that "bamping" doesn't get results...
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Sid on April 28, 2010, 03:25:34 AM
i've determined that all of these issues are caused by some weird network problem. not sure what it could be, as i can play online games and download things and stuff. any insight would be terrific. i'll provide more info if needed. thanks in advance.

When did you last run a virus/malware scan?
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 28, 2010, 10:13:59 AM
yes, bamp is 4chanese. and i did a full virus scan about a week ago along with a fully spyware/adware scan.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Salmon Trout on April 28, 2010, 10:16:57 AM
yes, bamp is 4chanese

Could you please try to use ordinary English in future?
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 28, 2010, 10:45:26 AM
Commencing shutdown of multilingual processing procedures. Anyway, did a quick scan of my system with Avast!, and it found nothing. Moved on to a full system scan, will post results when finished, which may be quite a while.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 28, 2010, 11:44:01 AM
kay just finished the full scan and restart of my system, with one piece of malware found on my external hdd. had avast move it to the chest, restarted the system, and still no external i.p.

any ideas, chaps?
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Ryder17z on April 28, 2010, 02:22:12 PM
Does windows show a message about "limited access" or any other issue/warning regarding networking ?

Have you done a "simple data packet loss" check?

^ To check that: Click Start->Run and type "cmd" without the quotes (the " -'s) and press enter, after that type "ping google.com", also without the quotes
If you would like to do a bigger test, you could use "ping google.com -n 10" to test 10 times instead of the usual 4, also in cmd
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 28, 2010, 04:50:52 PM
Windows hasn't given me any errors related to networking, and ill try the packet loss test when i get home.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 28, 2010, 09:01:00 PM
okay, just did the ping test, with no packet loss.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: yogesh_230 on April 29, 2010, 09:28:45 AM
what is exact
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 29, 2010, 11:00:52 AM
Exact packet loss? Well that would be 0%. If you need all the text from the ping test I can post it later, because I'm at work right now.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 29, 2010, 08:23:39 PM
ping test results:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Nickocosmicfatplanet>ping google.com -n 10

Pinging google.com [74.125.47.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52
Reply from 74.125.47.99: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 74.125.47.99:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 48ms, Maximum = 54ms, Average = 49ms

C:\Users\Nickocosmicfatplanet>
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on April 30, 2010, 08:23:00 PM
bump. anyone have any ideas?
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Ryder17z on May 01, 2010, 02:32:27 AM
I had a similar issue once, but i don't remember how it was solved :(
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Salmon Trout on May 01, 2010, 02:38:57 AM
I had a similar issue once, but i don't remember how it was solved :(

Thanks for telling us that.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on May 02, 2010, 01:39:50 PM
alrighty. after this, no more bumps. the issue will remain open yet unsolved.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Sid on May 02, 2010, 05:27:37 PM
Have you tried rebooting any routers?

Have you got any firewalls or proxies setup?
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on May 02, 2010, 09:37:20 PM
rebooting the router and the modem were the first things i did. i do have a firewall, but it's at defaults, and have never messed with it. not running any proxies, either.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: rthompson80819 on May 02, 2010, 11:54:05 PM
I guess we need to start with the basics.  How do you connect to the internet, DSL, cable, other?

Your pings look OK, but that's just a brief moment in time.

Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on May 03, 2010, 09:49:11 AM
i'm on dsl, as our areas cable provider stops a block from out house, lol.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Ryder17z on May 06, 2010, 10:13:34 AM
Thanks for telling us that.


And the point of being sarcastic was?


Something that could have happen (It happened to me) is that some update or something changed a setting in Windows Firewall

What happens if you turn it off and try to use Itunes and/or Google Earth  ?

Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on May 06, 2010, 01:00:57 PM
i've turned it off and no results. i always have the home/private network firewall off.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: Geek-9pm on May 06, 2010, 01:20:54 PM
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Network Magic Essentials 5.5 (http://www.purenetworks.com/product/essentials-features.php)
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on May 06, 2010, 11:13:32 PM
the network magic thing told me a bunch of stuff i already knew, then lied to me about my anti-virus/spyware not being installed. :P
i restarted and nothing changed.
Title: Re: bizarre connection issues...
Post by: midnightfire on May 07, 2010, 09:11:29 PM
i got it fixed. after some digging through the steam forums, i found that for whatever reason, internet explorer decided to try to set up a proxy server, and i had to go into the IE settings and disable it. i now have an external i.p and all the issues associated with it have now been fixed. thanks everyone for your help in this matter  :)