[basil731]

Was reading this thread "http://forums.techguy.org/web-email/825689-solved-cannot-connect-any-microsoft.html", seems i have a similar problem. I can't connect to microsoft.com from any of the 3 computers in my house. Also i einstalled windows on my uncles computer using his genuine xp pro, set it all up and got him online but he cant get to microsoft either using his router but his other computer using vista will get there, makes me wonder about the router which is what i thought may be my problem. Can anyone help please. Ive tried doing the mtu down to 1400 using tcpoptimiser but dont know if i can do similar stuff to my thomson speedtouch router. Ive also checked hosts file, nothing in there.

[pedroguy]

So,I guess I might try to ping the sites affected
start/cmd
type in
ping www.microsoft.com or whatever the site name is and note the results.
A failure to ping is generally a firewall issue.

[basil731]

ping request could not find host www.microsoft.com. ive done a lot of research and it mainly comes down to what i think is the mtu of the router. it was an old aol router, im not on aol anymore and people have said the mtu is probably too high. ive used things lik tcpoptimser etc which can change the mtu of the computer.
Unfortunately my router is the thomson speedtouch ST585v6sl which has no settings in the menu for the mtu. Ive looked everywhere and they just arent there. was looking at buying a router soon anyway and was looking at the linksys wrt54g which can apparently be reprogrammed to use dd-wrt which makes it loads better. My router runs quite slow and crashes every few days so think thats definitely the problem

[pedroguy]

I have a wrt54g hooked up to a dsl modem.
And I have been very satisfied with it.
Have had it in my Cable and DSL environments.