[plxnospam]

Certain random websites won't load. It's a very bizarre problem:

• The pages will load on all other computers on my LAN, just not mine
• The title of the page loads (which I mean as the text in the blue bar at the top of the browser) and the source code is all there. I can go to a page that doesn't load, hit view source, and see the whole html source. However, the page won't load.
• They won't display across browsers
• But wait, it gets weirder. Sometimes the page does show up! A page that doesn't load today might work Monday night, but not work again Tuesday morning.

The main site on which I experience problems is nytimes.com, but occasionally npr.org and washingtonpost.com will experience similar problems. The weird thing is this:

• The homepage (nytimes.com) will load
• Blogs (e.g. 1, 2) will load
• BUT articles (e.g. a, b , c) won't load
• Opinion pieces (ex. here) won't load either
• But like I said in an above bullet point, the page will load completely on occasion

Any and all help is appreciated!
I'm beginning to suspect it is a virus, if that sparks any synapses. A couple of weeks ago I removed two conflicting antivirus programs and installed a third one, and after I ran a scan the pages were able to load for about a week.
Other relevant info:

• System: Windows XP media edition SP3
• I recently switched from Comcast to Verizon FiOS
• I recently downloaded a new version of Java
• Firefox 3.6.3, but like I said, it's a problem across browsers

Again, all help very much appreciated.

[plxnospam]

Update: the pages will load through a proxy, but not through my computer. It might not actually be a virus, it might be my router and/or my LAN adapter...

[plxnospam]

Update2: Even more info

I can run>cmd>ping any website successfully -- yahoo.com, google.com, 192.168.1.3, en.wikipedia.org, etc. -- however, pinging nytimes.com or this link times out. However, nytimes.com continues to load perfectly fine in my browse (the other link experiences the problem I detail in the first post).

But wait, it gets weirder! Pinging global.nytimes.com works.

Any thoughts?

[plxnospam]

bump

[TerryNet]

Don't recall seeing those symptoms before, but try the following.

Use Device Manager to uninstall the driver for the network adapter; restart and let Windows discover the adapter and reinstall the driver.

Uninstall non-Windows security applications and run the appropriate Removal Tool if one is supplied by the provider. After testing you can reinstall them.

(From a JohnWill post)

TCP/IP stack repair options for use with Windows XP with SP2 or SP3.

Start, Run, CMD, OK to open a command prompt.

Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog

Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ip reset reset.log

Reboot the machine.

[plxnospam]

Alright, I'll try that, thank you very much. Just FYI, for the past couple days, the pages have been loading in Chrome but not in Firefox (or IE for that matter). But historically, this has been a cross-browser problem.

[TerryNet]

Could be a problem with an Add-on. Try Firefox in its safe mode [Start - All Programs - Mozilla Firefox - Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)].

[plxnospam]

Safe mode didn't do anything. Like I said before, it's usually a cross-browser problem.

The TCP/IP stack repair didn't do anything either, and neither did the uninstall, though I may have done the uninstall wrong. I uninstalled the driver, but when I plugged the adapter back in it was good to go nearly instantaneously.

Thanks again so much for the help.

[plxnospam]

The good news is that I've fixed the problem. The bad news is that it wasn't cheap. I had to replace the router (which I needed to replace for other reasons). But that seems to have done the trick.

Thanks for the help.

[TerryNet]

That was a strange one. Glad the router fixed it, and thanks for posting the solution.