Hi jeff - just to clear up a couple of things:

The shared IP under which all of our sites reside is on a below10host.com server, on which I resell the space; this is a linux server running php as an apache module and not in safe mode.

I have an identical test server setup with the latest xampp distro, apache version 2.2.2 on my local machine. This is running on my machine under XP Pro rather than Home. I've not experienced any of these sorts of problems, not on the box that died recently, and not on this new one.

This isn't server related as far as we can tell; this is a new shared IP since the problems started - at first we thought it must be the server, so I had below10 change me over to another machine. However, she's still having the problems after the move, and I can access all the sites just fine at all times, even when she's locked out on her machine.

On a slightly odd note, I have nothing at all in my hosts file except the one line for the 127.0.0.1 localhost loopback.

If you can think of anything else you need to know from me about the reseller server setup, please just ask!
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Oh, ok, that makes a big difference.

The key question is if in fact when one person is locked out of the remote site, if another person at another location is.

My guess is that they are but it may not be obvious, in other words, the dns is switching off and on, or the shared ip thing is buggy and sometimes working and sometimes not.

This is probably not related to the local dev apache server at all is my guess.

Another question is if it happens only on xp, or if it happens on linux too. One easy way to see this is to run the remote site on a livecd like kanotix, at www.kanotix.com

If you don't see that problem ever on the livecd you have to suspect windows xp, if you do, you have to suspect the shared ip hoster. I never use shared ip stuff so I can't say much about it, except it's always a low budge solution. Heck, I just signed up for a $3 a month hosting plan for some junk stuff and I get a dedicated ip. You get what you pay for of course, lol, but I do get dedicated ip.
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Nope, at the time we were testing I was accessing the site while she was locked out. I wasn't logged in as administrator or anything either, just accessing normally.

Really the only possible thing that could have changed would have been some sort of XP update I would think - on her end only. I don't allow XP to update automatically at all. And I don't have XP Home.

I'll start a new thread later for MY browser problems!
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Sounds like the xp update did something, but just what exactly is not clear.

since I have happily avoided xp except when clients use it, and for testing purposes, this is a new one for me, but probably is a known issue. xp home makes me somewhat worried though.

It's very odd that this would happen only on that machine however, or on a small set of machines.

My guess is that it's something so unthought of that when it's unearthed we'll all be amazed.

Faulty router for example comes to mind. Faulty networking card driver comes to mind. I've seen both in the last few months, and both can cause these kinds of intermittant issues, but with the exception that they affect all sites, not just that one server.

Another option is that her local dns servers are having a hard time locking onto that ip address for some reason, that could be it.
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Well.... I almost incline to the router and/or local dns idea, because she's had problems with the telecom off and on. She'll checkback this thread in her morning, and may have some further thoughts.

She and I have had discussions about XP Home vs XP Pro: I wouldn't use Home under any circs, I don't like it and I'm not at all sure WHY I don't like it.... but my "came with Home" laptop is now running Pro too.... and a friend whose machine I just redid from Home to Pro was having some wonkiness too (though not the same sort as quiltlady has had - unfortunately!)

Now on to composing my own browser-problem post *sigh*. Thanks for all your help, jeff!
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xp home is a stripped down and slightly mutated xp pro. They had no separate product being developed, but they needed to differentiate the two, so they simply removed key features from xp home.

Such as making you install the backup utility from cd rom. That's right, they give it to you, but it doesn't install it.

Plus the networking stuff, no domain controllers etc, that wouldn't cause this issue, but it's all in all just a pointless thing.

I preferred windows 2000 professional, there was one product, and it was the best they could do. I've always felt sorry for the ME users who were conned into buying ME instead of 2000 professional. Talk about a scam.

Of course, all this pales in comparison to the 5 versions that Vista is going to ship in. Well, xp has 3, the stripped down 3rd world version, to be fair.

It's entirely possible I will never work with vista, I'll have to see how it goes, I know I can keep my clients on at least xp pro until well past 2010, and maybe by then vista will be useable. Probably not.

But until we resolve this question, the real question is: where to put this thread? It's not a browser issue I think, can't be if it happens cross browser.

Guess webmaster issues it is.
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Yup. It's one of those grey-area things.... probably webmaster is the best place.
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Yes, I'd say it's bad.

I'd give this product spysweeper a double check.

If you installed it deliberately, that's not looking that good, if you didn't, it's looking bad.

I haven't used spysweeper myself, but using the hosts file to block sites is pretty amateur for that kind of product.

I'd save the hosts file as hosts-bu

then create a new hosts file, blank, with only one line:

127.0.0.1 localhost

on it.

Turn off spysweeper before you do this.

My guess is that xp is simply choking on the hosts file because it just has too much junk on it.

The only thing that is on my hosts file is my local websites, that's it.

A few lines.

I've seen other agents use it too, I think adsubtract did that as well, but not as badly as what you are seeing.

I missed that posting, this might be the culprit.

Keep in mind, hosts is not going destroy your system if you create a new one, so just do that, and see what happens at that point.
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Okay, here’s what I’ve done today:

I ran a tracert when things were working properly, here’s what it said:


Tracing route to dreamweavers-quilts.com [64.91.229.42] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms . [192.168.2.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 49 ms 49 ms 49 ms 217.0.68.98
4 136 ms 136 ms 136 ms 62.156.131.150
5 136 ms 136 ms 136 ms dt-gw.n54ny.ip.att.net [192.205.32.57]
6 155 ms 154 ms 155 ms tbr1-p010401.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.57]
7 154 ms 155 ms 154 ms tbr1-cl8.phlpa.ip.att.net [12.122.2.18]
8 155 ms 156 ms 154 ms tbr2-cl71.phlpa.ip.att.net [12.122.9.166]
9 156 ms 154 ms 154 ms tbr1-cl19.dtrmi.ip.att.net [12.122.10.37]
10 154 ms 153 ms 153 ms gar3-p300.dtrmi.ip.att.net [12.123.139.137]
11 154 ms 155 ms 154 ms 12.118.112.34
12 155 ms 154 ms 158 ms lw-core1-ge4.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.22]
13 156 ms 154 ms 155 ms lw-dc1-dist1-ge1.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.2]
14 156 ms 156 ms 157 ms dreamweavers-quilts.com [64.91.229.42]
Trace complete.

Then I did one when I’m locked out of the server:

Tracing route to dreamweavers-quilts.com [64.91.229.42] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms . [192.168.2.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 50 ms 49 ms 50 ms 217.0.68.98
4 136 ms 136 ms 137 ms 62.156.131.150
5 136 ms 135 ms 136 ms dt-gw.n54ny.ip.att.net [192.205.32.57]
6 154 ms 154 ms 155 ms tbr1-p010401.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.57]
7 154 ms 155 ms 154 ms tbr1-cl8.phlpa.ip.att.net [12.122.2.18]
8 156 ms 154 ms 154 ms tbr2-cl71.phlpa.ip.att.net [12.122.9.166]
9 156 ms 154 ms 155 ms tbr1-cl19.dtrmi.ip.att.net [12.122.10.37]
10 152 ms 153 ms 153 ms gar3-p300.dtrmi.ip.att.net [12.123.139.137]
11 155 ms 155 ms 155 ms 12.118.112.34
12 155 ms 155 ms 154 ms lw-core1-ge4.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.22]
13 156 ms 155 ms 155 ms lw-dc1-dist1-ge1.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.2]
14 155 ms 155 ms 155 ms dreamweavers-quilts.com [64.91.229.42] Trace complete.

Looks pretty much the same. I can still reach the server, but the browser can’t display the pages properly, if at all. I don’t understand why on leg 2 it always times out. I mean always: every tracert I’ve done, even before I began having this issue, has had the same results. But, it’s not any different before I’m locked out than it is during lockout.

I shut down spysweeper (which I only installed last week, and I’ve been having the website issues since end of May), and fixed my hosts file like jeffd said, didn’t help. I actually set spysweeper not to load automatically on startup, then rebooted and tested again, and was locked out of the remote server after refreshing.

Well, I guess I’m not really locked out of the server, since the tracert shows contact, but I can’t get the pages to display. The weird thing is, sometimes they don’t display at all, and sometimes I get pages with all the text but only partial formatting, no backgrounds or pics that are hosted on that server, but the links are active and styled properly.

Another weird thing this morning, even when I’m locked out on the desktop, I can walk across the room to my laptop and access the server just fine, which is not how it was just last night. I’ve been unable to duplicate the original locking out issue on the laptop this morning, and over the whole course of the problem, I’ve only seen it on the laptop once.
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Okay, it seems maybe that it’s a router issue. I’ve looked in my router security log and I see this:

21.06.2006 10:11:07 **SYN Flood to Host** 192.168.2.103, 2019->> 64.91.229.42, 80 (von PPPoE1 - Ausgang)

This is my computer trying to get to the server, at 64.91.229.42. and there are many more of the same entries before this one.

Bear in mind, my router software is all in German, and there is no English language version of the software interface. And the chances of customer support from the manufacturer are slim and none, in my native language anyway.

So, I looked around in there and found that in this section: Sicherheit / Firewall / Hackerabwehr, I can uncheck the following setting on the firewall options:

Einschalten von SPI und Anti DoS der Firewall (translates to something like switch on SPI and Anti DoS for Firewall)

When I uncheck it, I don’t get locked out of the remote server. If I am locked out, I can go into my router software and uncheck that setting, and then I can immediately access the remote server again. I know this is a bad setting to have unchecked! I went to grc.com and ran the Shields Up!! Test on common ports which my computer usually passes with a perfect “TruStealth” rating, and it FAILED. So, I know how to fix it, sort of, but can’t fix it because I’ll be open to attack.

I’ve looked at all the settings in my firewall area on the router, and can’t see how to configure it so that it doesn’t stop outgoing SYN floods, if that’s what I even need to be doing. I don’t understand why this only happens on my own sites at that remote server, and it’s only ever happened on the sites that have WordPress loaded. Oddly, I can’t dupe the problem on vkaryl’s sites that have WP loaded, and are hosted on the same server.

As a test, I’ve moved my directories that contain all the files from the two sites that have WP loaded out of the directory that apache accesses on my machine. THat would be the only difference between accessing vkaryl's sites with WP loaded on the remote server and accessing mine on the remote server.

I put the directories on a different partition and was not able to dupe the problem. Then when I put them back to test for the problem, I can't dupe the problem, so now I don't even know if it was that or not.

I'm leaving the directories where they are, back in their original place, and going on about my business today, but any further feedback on the rest of this would be hugely appreciated! And sorry about the length of these posts, but I did a lot of stuff!
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