IE out: IM ok

[royalelephant]

This happened once yesterday and again today. I was browsing when suddenly my browser told me everything was "server not found." I tried email and couldn't connect, but AOL IM was fine.

After I reboot the problem goes away. (Windows XP with IE6)

What's happening?

[MatthewHSE]

Doesn't AOL have a "leave connected" feature for brief "offline" periods? In other words, it could show that you were still online when you really weren't. Unless you were actually chatting with somebody at the time . . .

[choster]

I don't have a technical explanation, but I have experienced the same thing, and on numerous non-AOL Internet connections.

Whatever process or thread is responsible for DNS lookup fails; I am able to visit and refresh content from sites and services I already have open, and to visit sites via IP address, but am not able to do perform any new lookups. This happens sometimes in IE if I click "Stop" while it is "looking up" a site or after I change the proxy settings, and it used to occr frequently and completely unpredictably back on NN4.

It's probably related to some buggy software or background process. But restarting Windows always fixed it, and I can't remember encountering it since switching to Firebird.

[ORBiTrus]

Chuckle... I'm running Linux using NBTel (Aliant Telecom) Vibe service. It's an ADSL service.

I used to get this ALOT. Happened in Windows (constantly) using their software. Happened in Linux (constantly) using redhat software. Finally tried out Roaring Penguin ADSL and it worked like a charm... Maybe once in every 3 to 4 days I need to run adsl-restart.

One thing I noticed is that it is more common when running eDonkey - for some reason being hit alot causes it to shut down.... Well, now I'm running mlDonkey and NOT on port 4001, and all seems well...