troubleshooting so much fun

[F2d5thCav]

I went to help a member of the wife's family with a "computer problem" 

Was told the computer would not load web pages.  "Had no internet", etc. 

Sure enough, browser somehow could load Google (but only occasionally) and nothing else.  Already a weird deal.

I fire up a Windows shell.  Hey, ping works just fine.  I'm able to ping computers all over the world.  WTF? 

Finally, after a wasted hour looking at adaptor settings, flushing cookies, etc., I decide to do a shutdown and restart.

Gee!  The web browser works again. 

So I think what happened was this.  This particular PC has a button on the side that can be pressed to put it in sleep mode and wake it up.  And that's all this user had been using -- sleep, wake up, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.  Who knows how long it had been since the computer actually shut down.  And probably what happened is that a cache somewhere got corrupted, and it was blocking the browser from connecting.



Kinda wonder how much a repair shop or person would have charged for that diagnosis and resolution. 

Cheers