Octopus Overlords

my mom's laptop has an issue on a lot of websites where, as she's juuuust about to check out for purchasing something on a website, the website becomes unresponsive and times out. the website will continue to be unresponsive on that machine for a long time, but the weird thing is that the same website will become unresponsive to ALL machines on the same network. ("The connection has time out An error occurred during a connection to [website]")

from my machine:

PING tello.com (63.251.74.202): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
Request timeout for icmp_seq 6
Request timeout for icmp_seq 7
Request timeout for icmp_seq 8
Request timeout for icmp_seq 9

the website is obviously not down, as it can be accessed off the local network.

she is running Windows 11. does this sound like the computer is perhaps overwhelming the router with weird requests?

hitbyambulance wrote: ↑Tue Dec 27, 2022 3:16 pm she is running Windows 11. does this sound like the computer is perhaps overwhelming the router with weird requests?

That's what it sounds like. I can't remember what game it was, but many years ago when I was on a DSL modem, there was a single game that when I would try to populate the multi-player lounge, it would crash the modem. It had to do with how the game's MP servers were configured and I just happened to hit the unlucky lottery combination for the DSL modem I was using. My understanding is that it was some type of Denial of Service attack prevention and it was somehow sensing that MP server list request as a DDoS attack.

Wish I could offer help but for me there was no solution - other than not playing that one game online. Not very helpful for retail purchasing.

Try opening the Event Viewer (Press Win + X, then select Event Viewer from the options), and check through the various logs for any error codes or warnings that occur just before or at the time the sites become unresponsive.

Courtesy of MakeUseOf.com, here's a helpful overview of How to Troubleshoot Windows Problems Using Event Viewer Logs that walks you through more accurately and easily filtering Event Viewer logs to find the pertinent details you're after.

will look into that.

at least from the browser side, no requests seem to be getting through at all:

can't find anything in Event Viewer that corresponds to this. hours later, and still can't access the site from within the local network. going to have to check router and modem logs next.

Huh, redrun was just asking about the same thing with his Windows 11 that started just after an update earlier this week. He kept having to reboot his router. After checking the usual software subjects, I suggested he start troubleshooting his router/service but he figured DNS. I said he could always try 8.8.8.8 and that seemed to fix his problem. I wonder if his machine ran another update and that fixed his problem.

Yeah, try undoing the latest Windows update, may help, if you have it on "auto-update".

AND/OR trying a different network card.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sat Dec 31, 2022 2:24 pm Yeah, try undoing the latest Windows update, may help, if you have it on "auto-update".

AND/OR trying a different network card.

it's been doing this for some time. also it's a laptop, so can't switch out the network card.

You could plug in a USB one and disable the built-in one.

good idea, but it will have to wait until for the next time i visit. (i have one at my apartment)