Two Websites With 127.0.0.1 not displaying

[AttaGirl42]

Hello!
Today, when I got up and sat down at my computer, I discovered I could not sign in to Hotmail. When I clicked on my shortcut Icon on the desktop, I get a page that says "Internet Explorer Cannot Display The Webpage." Also, I notice that before this shows, very quickly in the tool bar area at the top, shows 127.0.0.1 then the page shows up I just mentioned. I can access everything else except one more site and this is the strange one. It's Pogo.com. I bring up the homepage just fine, I select a game just fine and it brings up the window with the room selections and I select a room and I get the exact message and IP numbers as I got with the hotmail attempt. I accessed both of these sites last night before going to bed and they worked fine.

I did not have any programs running overnight and no updates were downloaded or installed. I have looked all day for an answer to this frustrating problem.

I have cable as my internet connection, I'm using Internet Explorer 7.0, I have the newest version of Sun Java, I have run two spyware agents as well as anti virus tests and except for a couple of tracking cookies everything was normal. I also have Window's XP home edition with the Service Pack 2 installed.

I went to the MSN homepage and tried to click on the Hotmail link there but still got the same IP of 127.0.0.1 and then the Page cannot be displayed message.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have done a complete scan disk, a complete cache clearing, temp files clearing, cookies cleared.

Thanks for your help! I really appreciate it.

[HAN]

AttaGirl42: Looks to me like your HOSTS file file has been compromised. This file is where you PC is told that the 127.0.0.1 location is your own computer. The normal HOSTS file listing for Windows PCs have 1 address in them, which is
127.0.0.1 localhost

This tells your computer that any listing for the localhost is to go to the local PC (your PC.)

Your HOSTS file now appears to contain at least 2 more entries, namely
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 hotmail.com
(plus one more for the pogo.com game site.)

So now, your HOSTS file is telling your PC that hotmail and the pogo site are now on your PC (NOT on the web!)

My advice would be to go over to the Hijack This! forum (here at Virtual Dr.) and follow the instructions at this link http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d.php?t=167915 Let's hope all you will need to do is clean up the HOSTS file!

[AttaGirl42]

Hi

Thanks for your reply, but I forgot to mention last night in my posting that I had checked my host file with notepad and it only shows the one entry of 127.0.0.1 in it. Nothing else except for the two examples listed above it.

I did finally get a notice from my Cable company this morning, SCI cable that says they are upgrading their systems and we are to re-boot our modems and routers. I had already re-booted my modem yesterday and I do not use a router since I only have one computer connected. I think my problem has something to do with their maintenance because my problem began the very morning their upgrading began. I may be wrong and it just might be a coincidence, but I'm just grasping here. LOL

Anyway, they gave a tech support number that of course is only operational Monday through Friday, and I will call it tomorrow.

But I just find it so very odd that only two sites are being stubborn. LOL

Thank you for your time and I do appreciate it!!

Have a great day!!

[HAN]

If your HOSTS file is ok, then something else is redirecting those sites back to your PC.

You could try pinging hotmail from a command prompt to see if your PC can get there ok.

To ping, go to Start|Run and type cmd and click ok. Then, at the prompt, type ping www.hotmail.com and hit return.

If it reaches hotmail normally, it will look similar to mine. If not, something is still amiss.

If ping stills goes to your PC, you could also try flushing the DNS cache in your PC (on the chance it's corrupted somehow.) To flush the DNS cache, open up a command window as before, and this time type ipconfig /flushdns and hit return. Then try pinging hotmail again.

If hotmail still shows up as 127.0.0.1, then something is acting as a compromised HOSTS file. I guess I would then lean toward something like a local proxy (like an ad filter.) But without knowing more, I am not sure exactly what I would look at next. If it is somehow the cable company, I have not seen a 127.0.0.1 message from an ISP before. But there is always a first time!

FWIW, if you can swing the cost, an inexpensive router that can do Network Address Translation (NAT) would be worth every red cent you would spend on it. NAT really helps to make things safer. NAT would allow your PCs address to be different from the one the web sees. Getting past NAT is very difficult to do and it helps lighten the protective load from your firewall. NAT still doesn't filter out viruses or evil scripting at bad websites but web attacks are fended off quite well.