TR e-mail links broken?

Clarifications

either at the workstation or somewhere between it and the site. "Cannot find server or DNS error" is a networking problem. Can you reach other sites from that workstation? Perhaps access is blocked to ct.techrepublic.com.com?

Doug

Please see my later posting:

http://tinyurl.com/3ve4ks

If our problems are indeed related, it could be the html JavaScript. Perhaps we should query TR to determine whether any changes have been effected?

When both of us encounter glitches contacting and posting to TR, and neither of us has made any changes to our software, then by process of elimination, the glitch must be with the ISP or TR.

Rick/Portland, OR

It is a problem resolving host ct.techrepublic.com.com only in IE. With nslookup or ping I can resolve ct.techrepublic.com.com to a valid IP address (216.239.113.96). If I navigate to that address http://216.239.113.96 I get the CnetNetworks banner page with message "We're sorry, but we are currently unable to redirect you to the page that you're looking for."

If I try a full non-working URL like http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=55192987-2982ad41002d30b19492faffb8fd77eb-bf&brand=TECHREPUBLIC&s=5

I get a "server not found or DNS error" error page.

Here is the interesting part, if I combine my efforts, as in
http://216.239.113.96/clicks?t=55192987-2982ad41002d30b19492faffb8fd77eb-bf&brand=TECHREPUBLIC&s=5

I wind up at this site:
http://domainhelp.search.com/search?q=ct+239&d=ct.239.com.com

So it is definitely something whacky with IE with name resolution, XP itself has no trouble resolving. I have tried flushdns and rebooting. As noted earlier another computer on same LAN w/ same firewall and ISP has no trouble. I tried reseting all IE options back to default - nothing. Symantec and AdAware don't reveal any mischief either (although now it's starting to look like some kind of hijack). No other site so far has manifested this problem.

Thanks for help - this one really has me stumped.

I haven't looked at what this program can do for sure. But, based on what you said that it did, and if that's all it does, you could have done it manually yourself which should have been among the first things you did when trying to troubleshoot your problem.

By the way, if you want a program that will actually do something for you, and is free, try CCleaner. It DOES "touch" the registry for you and does quite a good job at cleaning it up.

I've never had an instance of something in temp files or cookies causing IE to stop resovling host names - I went through IE options for clearing history and temporary files - that should have take care of cached files. If you have to do more than that it would seem someone at Microsoft should fix that rather than work on IE 8 or 9 or whatever it is they doing.

I know about ccCleaner - but I wanted to minimize the actions I took all at once to isolate what the solution was.

On the site there is this advice:

"[i]Please make a backup of your hard disk before running CleanUp! for the first time.
If you're not sure how to do this, see the CleanUp! FAQs[/i]"

That kind of preamble tends to make me think you may end up getting rid of more than just the 'problematic' files. ;)

True, but I think it's mostly CYA thing. Everytime I see an MSDN article that tells you to make a registry change it comes with a similar stern warning. I have no particular allegance to this tool besides that it worked - like any other tool you have to watch how you wield it. That's another reason I choose one that didn't muck with the registry. The first time the utility runs it is in "demo" mode. It will scroll to screen (and optionally a log file) the intended changes for you to review. I caught that it was deleting my c:\temp directory (which I created myself) full of stuff I am using, so I renamed it. I also added cookies I wanted to keep to the exclude list, only then did I set it loose.

Again, I am stumped why IE itself cannot properly delete temporary internet files because I did that first without effect. How they even caused a problem in the first place for that matter still annoys me too.

I have to continue ranting a bit, one reason for this problem is that Microsoft made the other profile files & directories outside of "My Documents" so mystical. Hidden, system files, combinations - I don't understand basis for that either. Explorer and a command window do not readily display those files (and show different results) and Explorer shows temporary files all in one large directory not the hundreds of sub-directories that actually exist. Nevermind using the built in search to actually locate them - it's useless and needs registry hacks to make it search for anything other than Office files. Thus you get forced into using these tools to do your work.

You said "one reason for this problem is that Microsoft made the other profile files & directories outside of "My Documents" so mystical. Hidden, system files, combinations - I don't understand basis for that either. Explorer and a command window do not readily display those files (and show different results) and Explorer shows temporary files all in one large directory not the hundreds of sub-directories that actually exist."

There's no mystery to it at all. The files are hidden by default because the everyday user has no need to find them and doing so would expose them to being deleted, renamed or moved "by accident". Of course, you know what would happen if they did. Hiding them is MS's attempt to protect the user from themselves. Most users don't even know they're there. Any power user, of course, knows that MS gives them the tools to look at them (unhide).

When you put the 'tick' in the box that caused your problems (unticked by default) CCleaner flags-up a warning warning you of the severity of your action.

You must have missed that when you turned that function on. ;)

...not too long ago.

I get certain updates via e-mail, and since I've been getting the TR updates, the links have always worked. Well one day, they stopped working. I could manually goto the website and read the articles, but the link from the e-mail wasn't working.

Not but a few weeks later, they started working again. No changes to my local system. Weird, huh?

Then you need to go into safe mode and then delete it from the "Add and remove" section. You will be able to remove anything (with in reason) in safe mode. Well that is what i do and it does it well. No problem. :)

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.
If this information is useful, please mark as helpful. Thanks

Maybe the IT guys can shed some light, but I have never seen a web page start with "ct" rather than "www" nor have I seen a ".com.com" instead of a ".com". I think they are using an customized incorrect algorythm to set up there links.