Problems with Comission Junction & XP

[Vending_Guy]

I need some feedback from everyone out there. I am an affiliate with eBay on Comission Junction. I seem to be doing pretty well (about $8/week earnings) but I just found a potentially troubling problem.

I have been on two separate XP systems and niether one is able to use my CJ affiliate links. They can't even go to www.cj.com website. They get the whitepage error - "Unable to locate server". Is it some with CJ or XP. The one system worked fine when it was Win98/IE6, the other is a brand new XP system from Dell. I cannot replicate the problem from my computer Win98/IE6

Both XP systems seem to work fine with beFree.com and myaffiliateprogram.com affiliate programs so it seems to be something that CJ is doing. Both system also have cookies enabled and java installed.

The CJ tech I'm working with seem clueless and unconcerned with the problem so I am curious if anyone out there has had this problem and/or knows how to solve this? Since my webstats say 25% of my visitors use XP I am concerned I am losing a lot of potential comissions.

Thanks for your help!

[Drastic]

No problems here with ie6 on XP reaching cj direct or through affiliate links.

Maybe a temp routing/network/isp problem. Try a traceroute.

[RichD]

Try typing ping www.cj.com at a command (dos) prompt.

I've heard reports that some ad-blocking software modifying the hosts file so certain requests get redirected to 0.0.0.0.

You should normally get a response something like: -
Pinging www.cj.com [216.34.209.14] with 32 bytes of data: OR
Pinging www.cj.com [63.236.5.135] with 32 bytes of data:

Don't worry if you get Request timed out messages.

[Vending_Guy]

Thanks a lot for the info. You guys are MUCH more helpful than the CJ tech support.

When I run a ping of www.cj.com it runs successfully but returns the address 127.0.0.1 When I run Tracert it runs and I only get the one line that shows communication with 127.0.0.1

There seems to be some kind of "ad-blocking" software on the computer but I can't figure out what it is. I've ended almost every process and program on the computer but still get the error. That brings me back to suspecting IE6 or XP again.

Have I missed something?

[Drastic]

It has probably been done in your hosts file. (Thanks Rich, didn't think of that.) Check out this page for how it works, and you should be able to figure out how to remove it:
[ecst.csuchico.edu...]

They don't list the file location for xp, you will find it here:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

[Vending_Guy]

You were right "Drastic". The block was setup in the HOSTS file. I made a quick change and it works like a champ now.

Thank you everyone for your help! :-)