I've come to the conclusion that at some point, a pldt dsl subscriber will have to change their dns settings (tcp/ip) for their connection to work. Two times now, I've had to set preferred and alternate dns addresses to load websites properly. The first time was last year on our old computer. And again, this year, on this machine -- just last night, to be specific.
I'm not an expert - far from it - but I do well in some areas when it comes to troubleshooting. As long as I don't delete anything or mess with settings that I've no idea about, it should be fine. And since this is a windows machine, restarting the pc is the norm when troubleshooting too. Well, I went through a common-sense checklist of why the pages wouldn't load right.
Symptoms:
Some pages would load only after repeated "refreshes", some wouldn't load images, and "page load error" on most of them.
Usual suspects:
1 - Malware. Scanned machine (on-demand) and everything looked OK so this wasn't the cause. Seriously, I would've been so disappointed (and slightly surprised) if this was the cause.
2 - Firewall. I reset it to allow FF by deleting it from the list of allowed programs, reran FF and when the firewall asked about it, set it to "allow always" as a permanent rule. Nope, this wasn't the cause.
3 - Browser. Since I updated to FF 3.0.10, I thought that I was dealing with a bug. Used IE and had the same problem so it wasn't a browser issue - thank goodness. With IE, instead of seeing a page load error, my built-in AV search result suggested a DNS problem so...
The culprit:
4 - ISP. Our isp - pldt dsl. OK, skype and ym connected without problems so it must've been loading-website, ip thing. Remembered same problem last year - images wouldn't load when I was using our old machine - and that I kept a note on how that was solved (personal troubleshooting notes are always helpful).
The solution:
Pulled up that old note and saw that I changed dns settings. Used that solution and - voila - problem solved.
Turns out there's a whole forum on pldt dsl issues where auto dns settings from the isp would stop working. Other pinoys have shared dns settings that work on that forum. If you can't find that forum (I don't have time to look it up now), use OpenDNS settings 'cause theirs is no-muss, no-fuss and a whole lot more.
I'm not an expert - far from it - but I do well in some areas when it comes to troubleshooting. As long as I don't delete anything or mess with settings that I've no idea about, it should be fine. And since this is a windows machine, restarting the pc is the norm when troubleshooting too. Well, I went through a common-sense checklist of why the pages wouldn't load right.
Symptoms:
Some pages would load only after repeated "refreshes", some wouldn't load images, and "page load error" on most of them.
Usual suspects:
1 - Malware. Scanned machine (on-demand) and everything looked OK so this wasn't the cause. Seriously, I would've been so disappointed (and slightly surprised) if this was the cause.
2 - Firewall. I reset it to allow FF by deleting it from the list of allowed programs, reran FF and when the firewall asked about it, set it to "allow always" as a permanent rule. Nope, this wasn't the cause.
3 - Browser. Since I updated to FF 3.0.10, I thought that I was dealing with a bug. Used IE and had the same problem so it wasn't a browser issue - thank goodness. With IE, instead of seeing a page load error, my built-in AV search result suggested a DNS problem so...
The culprit:
4 - ISP. Our isp - pldt dsl. OK, skype and ym connected without problems so it must've been loading-website, ip thing. Remembered same problem last year - images wouldn't load when I was using our old machine - and that I kept a note on how that was solved (personal troubleshooting notes are always helpful).
The solution:
Pulled up that old note and saw that I changed dns settings. Used that solution and - voila - problem solved.
Turns out there's a whole forum on pldt dsl issues where auto dns settings from the isp would stop working. Other pinoys have shared dns settings that work on that forum. If you can't find that forum (I don't have time to look it up now), use OpenDNS settings 'cause theirs is no-muss, no-fuss and a whole lot more.
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