Need computer help

[jess d]

Okay, so my computer has decided that I am no longer able to access certain things and I can't figure out why...
On Tuesday afternoon, it decided I was now longer allowed to access proboards forums, after letting me on them at lunchtime.
And now, it has decided that I am no longer allowed to request EverRealm creatures, as it has apparently blocked the EverRealm as well!

If anyone has any ideas as to what the problem could be, or any possible means of correcting it, please let me know. I have tried several things already, but so far none have worked. Someone in one of my classes suggested checking the http ports, but it's hard to do that when you don't know which are used.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[Astra]

Do you have any sort of antivirus or firewall installed on your computer? If so, you might want to turn it off temporarily and see if that does anything ... sometimes those things can be a little overprotective

[Shiolar]

If those sites used to work and don't anymore, then it's either a recent firewall update, if you've updated your software recently. Or else you could have some spyware or adware, since those can cause the same problem.

Otherwise, it might not be your computer at all; it might be a glitch on your ISP. For a connection to be made from your computer to any given site, there's normally six or seven different servers on the route. If one of those goes down, you simply can't access any sites that have that server in its route. But other people in different locations or using different ISPs would use different routes, and thus have no problem.

You can actually get software to track these kinda things, which is quite interesting to see. There was one time I couldn't access Invisionfree, and I found out that some obscure server in Texas had gone down. Why my connection was going via Texas I have no idea, but there we go.

So if you can't find any apparent cause on your computer, you might just have to wait it out.

[Xalia]

I had this happen to me before! Suddenly my computer stopped loading the Nexus forum (you can imagine how upset I was!) and though I initially assumed the forum was down, when no e-mails came through the Kshau group talking about it I began to wonder. I checked both my computers and nothing seemed to fix it. So I called my ISP...we ran a bunch of tests and finally figured out the source of the problem...

My wireless router had blocked the connection to the forum! No idea why, unless someone hacked into it and messed with it (I was stupid and hadn't secured it at that point). So check your wireless router and resetting it doesn't always work. I had to connect to my ISP without the router temporarily to get the router to recognize the site! Not really sure how that worked, but it did, and my router is now secured!!!

So if you're working on a router, whether or not it's wireless check that out and see what happens!